IE 97 
,6 

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Copy 2 



E 97 
.6 

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1878. 1888. 



* 

TEN YEARS' WORK FOR INDIANS 



AT THE 



HAMPTON NORMAL AND AGRICULTURAL INSTITUTE, 



AT 



HAMPTON, VIRGINIA- 



* 



Printed by Colored and Indian 
students trained in the 
office of the Hamp- 
ton Institute. 



Preface. 



The following statement, edited and partly written by Miss. Helen 
Ludlow, teacher of the Hampton Institute, is a reliable and, I think, 
timeiy account of its ten years work for Indians, in which she has had 
an active and important part. 

Especially the questions of co-education of races and of health 
have been raised, and attention is invited to the discussion of them. 

This and other schools for Indians East and West are challenged, 
by many, as to the results of their work, and have been constantly on 
the defensive ; we attempt to show by personal observation on the 
ground, by correspondence with those in the field, and by the official 
reports of agents, that a fair and hopeful record has been made by 
Indian pupils who have returned to their homes from Hampton ; we 
believe the same to be true of those educated at Carlisle and at the 
Lincoln Institution and Educational Home at Philadelphia. Visits to, 
correspondence with, and helpfulness to returned Indians is of vital 
importance, and we do much in that way. 

Strong adverse reports have appeared, justified to some extent by 
the weak or wrong conduct of these imperfectly educated Indians, 
who in a three or four years' course cannot usually become strong in 



civilized ways, but partly due to a want of helpful sympathy and guid- 
ance, which they need, and to the difficulty of getting employment. 
Efficient agents are their great reliance, most of whose reports are en- 
couraging, in spite of deaths and relapses. Unquestionably, much 
effort and expense, by way of local direction, is necessary to insure 
the benefits of educating Indians. The help of missionaries in this 
matter has been of the greatest value. A full account of Hampton's 
Indian graduates is given in Miss Folsom's statement in this pamphlet. 

Supplementary work, such as enlisting private charity, through 
the Women's National Indian Association, to build homes for re- 
turned married couples, of whom we train a few every year in sep- 
arate cottages— they paying back all money advanced— giving a 
special education to a select few to be nurses, physicians, ministers or 
high grade teachers, is also a part of our effort, and the result has 
been, and promises to be, most satisfactory. The more thorough the 
work the surer the success of it, as in all education. 

While the Indian and Negro students here are generally separate 
in dormitories, workshops, at meals for reasons of diet, and partly 
in recitations (40 Indians being in normal colored classes, the rest in 
classes by themselves), what contact there is in workshops, classes, gen- 
eral services, and in the cadet organization, has proved mutually pleas- 
ant and profitable; yet there is little intimacy. No doubt some low 
talk and ideas have been brought in from the low life in the South and 
West ; but in ten years not a serious fracas has occurred, not a single 
case of immorality, between the students of both races and of both 
sexes. There has been a steady progress side by side in study and 
work, occasional misunderstanding, but no material harm done either 
race by the other, and considerable good. Both are doing th 



ie same 



5 

thing —fitting to be good citizens, by the same methods, elementary 
English education and lessons in hard work. The Negro's use of 
English and his steady working habits are a help to the Indians ; the 
dignity of labor must be impressed equally on both. Both are to be 
in the main, agricultural people, but can become good mechanics. A 
few should be fitted for higher spheres : many can teach common 
schools. 

In their association Christian character has been formed, skilled 
labor produced, and a deep moral earnestness for the welfare of their 
respective races developed. It has paid. Not the least important 
result of the work here, and at other Eastern schools, has been the 
public interest and sentiment developed, which has been, and yet will 
be, I believe, a benefit to every Indian child on the reservations. The 
chief expression or organ of this public sentiment, the Indian Rights 
Association, of Philadelphia, has been a power for the Indian's good. 

The health, diet, medical care and the death rate of Indians is re- 
ported on by Dr. M. M. Waldron, school physician for the past seven 
years. 

The experience of ten years suggests an increase of "outing" 
among farmers for Indian pupils, which cannot well be done without 
keeping them for several months at a good school, to be drilled in 
English, in good habits, and their characteristics understood. Scat- 
tering Indians without a central training school is impracticable. 
With proper legislation, providing little if any more than the cost of 
transportation, much more "outing" could be arranged throughout 
the country; a few agents, selected for their fitness, should be ap- 
pointed to help look after them. 

That the present is a most critical time for the Indian is ad- 



6 

mitted ; not a third of the required educational facilities are pro- 
vided, and. through the Dawes Bill, citizenship is upon him. The In- 
dian question is chiefly an executive one. Nothing more retards its 
settlement than the insufficient provision by Congress of salaries for 
the men needed to do the work of keeping and caring for the red 
race in its transition from barbaric to civilized conditions ; during 
this process there may be expected great suffering and wrong, un- 
less capable practical, honest men, under the rules of Civil Service Re- 
form, are appointed to stand by them in selecting and cultivating their 
homesteads. More work than ever is now needed, for it is a ques- 
tion of progress or ruin. Only the combined resources of the gov- 
ernment and of the people, in cordial co-operation, can save the 
red race and redeem the "Century of Dishonor." 

S. C. ARMSTRONG, 

Principal. 

Hampton, Va. 

April, 1888." 



TEN YEARS' WORK FOR INDIANS 

AT THE 

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, 

AT HAMPTON, VIRGINIA. 

By Helen W. Ludlow. 

gHE Hampton Institute is now twenty years old; the old- 
^5.^ est of the schools established for its proper work for the 
Negro or the Indian. For just half its existence, it has been working 
for the two races. While yearly reports and frequent statements of 
its progress in each direction have been made, this seems a fitting 
time to put a brief review of both efforts, and particularly the later 
one, before the public. 

From first to last, in all it has undertaken to do, the school has 
been an answer to an urgent call, a pressing need. 

The first appeal was the Freedmen's. At the close of the war, 
the ruined streets of Hampton, and the fields and shores stretching 
between that village and Fort Monroe, were thronged with the cabins 
and tents of some ten thousand refugee " contrabands." Here the 
first mission schools were started for the ex-slaves. The majority 
returned to their former homes in other places, with aid from the 
Government, through the Freedman's Bureau. A large number re- 
mained : those who were most able to shift for themselves and suc- 
cessful in getting employment in the neighborhood, mostly at their 
old homes. For these and for all the millions turned out of the lead- 
ing strings of slavery into United States citizenship, by the war and 
its consequences, primary education was at once imperatively needed , 
but primarily, moral and manual labor training into manhood, in- 
dustry and self-support. 



V 



To do this work, and on the theory that it is the basis of all 
human progress, the school was founded in 1868 by the American 
Missionary Association, on the suggestion of Gen. S. C. Armstrong, 
who had been stationed on the spot since 1866, as "Superintendent 
of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands " in this 
part of eastern Virginia, and by whom the work of Hampton Insti- 
tute, thus founded, has been developed. It was incorporated in 1870 by 
the State of Virginia, as a private and independent organization, with 
the title of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. Its en- 
tire property is held and controlled by a board of trustees, on which 
no one religious denomination has a majority. 

Its position proved to be eminently adapted to its work, situated 
in the midst of a large Negro population ; in a state which has led 
the progress of liberal educational ideas in the " New South ;" at a 
centre of natural commercial development and great railroad inter- 
ests, a point of easy access to Northern markets and to Northern re- 
sources ; a health and pleasure resort of the Northern and Southern 
public, with whom its relations must ever be vital. 

Its growth has demonstrated both its advantages and the need of 
its work. 

It began, in 1868, with fifteen students and two teachers, in the 
wooden barracks of old Camp Hamilton, the base hospital of the Un- 
ion army. It was liberally aided from the construction fund of the 
Freedman's Bureau, and its first brick school building had been built 
chiefly by this aid, when it was incorporated in 1870. In 187 1 a one- 
third share in the proceeds of the Agricultural College land grant 
of Virginia was awarded it by the General Assembly, amounting to 
a yearly income of Si 0,000, at the generous rate of interest paid by 
the state, which has power to revoke the grant. All the rest of its 
support and development, except the general government's subse- 
quent aid in support of Indian students, and the amount which color- 
ed students are able to pay in cash and labor towards their board, has 
come from private benevolence. 



9 



At the close of its first decade, the school reported a total admis- 
sion in the ten years, of 927 students (colored) with 277 graduates, all 
but 17 of whom had become teachers of their people. Many of them 
had bought land and established themselves in homes ; many were 
farming as well as teaching ; some had gone into business. A very 
small proportion had failed to do well. The enrolment that year was 
332, of whom 130 were girls. In place of the old barracks, Virginia 
Hall had been erected chiefly through the efforts of the Hampton 
Singers (see frontispiece) at a cost of $75,000, the largest barn in 
the state had been built, and the fine herd well started which for an- 
other ten years was of great benefit to the county as well as the 
school ; a boys' dormitory and a gas house had been put up, and 
some shops in which the mechanical department of the school's 
industrial system was beginning to develop. The school was out of debt. 

WORK FOR THE INDIAN. 

The same year, 1878, came unsought the new call to work also 
for the Indian — a call as unmistakable and as urgent as the first. 

The history is widely known and will not be forgotten, of the 
wise, humane and wonderfully successful work of Captain R. H. Pratt 
upon the Indian prisoners of war under his charge in old Fort Marion, 
at St. Augustine, Fla., the starting point of the whole present interest 
in, and effort for, Indian education and civilization. 

When twenty-one of these captives gladly accepted the oppor- 
tunity to remain East for education when the prison doors were 
opened, and the older ones went home, Captain Pratt requested ad- 
mission for certain of them at Hampton Institute, the only school 
where they could receive a training in industry and self help. 

There was no obstacle in the way of this in the principles or con- 
stitution of the school. In the liberal charter granted on its incorpo- 
ration by the state of Virginia, there is no mention made of race or 
nationality, but its purpose is defined to be " For the instruction of 
youth in the various common school, academic and collegiate 



10 



branches, the best method of teaching the same, and the best mode 
of practical industry in its application to agriculture and the mechanic 
arts ; and for the carrying out of these purposes, the said trustees may 
establish any departments or schools in the said institution." 

It was felt that here would be an interesting opportunity to test 
the broadness of the school's principles and methods ; that no harm, 
but benefit would result to the race for which it was already working, 
from seeing that others could share their advantages, and that it 
might be a new departure for the Indian, calling for a helping hand on 
the road so long barred, as much by the nation's indifference as by his 
own . 

Such a call could not be disregarded. Fifteen of the St. August- 
ine Indians — chiefly Kiowas and Cheyennes from Indian Territory — 
were received in April, 1S7S ; two more were added later. There were 
not wanting prophecies that Indians would not work and would not 
get on with Negroes. Both predictions were disposed of when the 
seventeen braves fell cheerfully into line, with spade and plow and 
hoe, awl and hammer. 

In a few months the enterprise had attained such evident success, 
that the government, till then only an on-looker at an experiment of 
private benevolence, at the suggestion of the school, cordially re- 
sponded to by Hon. Carl Schurz, then Secretary of the Interior, asked 
it to undertake the instruction of fifty Sioux from Dakota, boys and 
girls. The government agreed to pay $167 and transportation for 
each as now, the number being limited later to 120 thus supported at 
any one time, the school assuming all further expenses for support, 
building and apparatus. 

The new party — forty boys and nine girls — arrived in November, 
1878, collected by Captain Pratt, who, at the school's request, had 
been detailed to help begin the Indian work at Hampton, and who re- 
mained with it till 1879, when its success induced the government to 
start him. at his suggestion, in his own great and good work at Carlisle. 



< 



11 



Thus inaugurated, Hampton's work for the Indian has continued 
for ten years to increase and prosper. It has not been without a pro- 
portion of vexations and individual failures ; it has not escaped criti- 
cism and attack ; it did not expect miraculous immunity from any of 
these ills which all benevolent work is heir to ; it does not count them 
all unmixed evils. It counts as one of its great advantages, in its work 
for the Indian as well as for the Negro, a situation within such easy 
reach of that public on whose intelligent interest the future of the 
Indian especially depends. To create a public sentiment of justice, 
faith and generosity, has been a very important part of its work— half 
the work of all the Eastern schools for Indians, in which they are as 
helpful to those in the West as to themselves. 

The constant changes in a popular government necessitate as 
frequent' restatement of the work, to those on whose legislation its 
support in part depends. This necessity also has its advantages. We 
only pray a candid consideration of these statements, and cordially 
invite a verification of them by careful and competent inspection. 
The school, in all its departments, methods and accounts, is at all 
times open to such examination. It is right and desirable that 
those who give money or appropriate public funds to a work should 
fully understand it. 

In the ten years of its work for Indians, Hampton Institute has 
received 467 Indian students— 320 boys and 147 girls— representing 27 
tribes, and coming from five states and three territories, as follows : 

From Dakota Territory, 301, chiefly Sioux from the agencies of 
Yankton, Crow Creek, Lower Brule, Cheyenne River and Standing 
Rock ; from Indian Territory, 56, chiefly Sac and Fox ; (all but four 
of the St. Augustines having gone with Captain Pratt to Carlisle when 
it was started, are naturally counted there, and not included here) ; 
from Nebraska, 70, chiefly Omahas and Winnebagoes ; from Virginia, 
1, of the Pamunky tribe, who came, however, at his own charges, and 
entirely independent of Government. By far the largest number from 
anv one tribe have been Sioux, from Dakota. 



12 



In fulfilling its part of the agreement with government, two large 
brick buildings have been put up : the " Wigwam," for Indian boys, 
and " Winona Lodge," for Indian girls, (see frontispiece) at a total cost 
of over 352.000: the school's facilities for industrial training largely 
increased in shops and machinery, and a special corps of instructors 
provided. In the ten years, 8120,813. 16 up to July 1, 18S7, have 
been given by private benevolence to further the Indian work at 
Hampton, in buildings, outfit and current expenses. It represents 
the growth of public interest in the cause of the Indian, and the faith 
in the school's work, chiefly of those who have watched it longest and 
most closely. 

Nowhere in the country have the people united more heartily with 
the government than here, to help the Indians ; and nowhere, prob- 
ably, has the nation received a better return for its appropriations., 
from the fact that all land, buildings, outfit and improvements needed 
have been provided by charity. Not a dollar for these purposes has 
been asked for from the national treasury. 

Besides the 120 Indians aided by appropriation, fifteen a year on 
an average are constantly maintained by charity ; authority to bring 
here fifty more, to be first taught, then placed among farmers at no 
expense to government besides transportation, has been asked for, 
There is no better training for Indians than living with thrifty farmers. 

Indian students are on precisely the same basis as to charges 
(810.00 a month for board, fuel, light, washing, furnished room and 
medical care) as other students. For their clothing, books, etc., $47.00 
a year is devoted, thus accounting for the $167.00 apiece received 
annually from government. Charity provides tuition, ($70 a year,) and 
the many other needs of a civilizing work— a training of the hand, head 
and heart. A considerable expense has been the education of public 
sentiment on the Indian question by meetings and by publications. 

THE CONTACT OF RACES. 

As the question of bringing Indians and Negroes together for 



13 



education at Hampton has been always a subject of interested inquiry, 
and sometimes of adverse prophecy and criticism, it is as well to 
bring it to the front. 

As it has been said, as far as the St. Augustine Indians were 
concerned — and they were fine representatives of some of the proud- 
est and most intellectually superior Indian tribes— the question seemed 
•disposed of at once by the hearty cheerfulness with which they fell 
into line beside their Negro comrades. They were no doubt influ- 
enced by the spirit of their friend and guide, Captain Pratt, who said 
in introducing them on our platform, to the audience of Hampton 
people and school officers and students, " There will be no collision 
between the races here. These Indians have come to work." It proved 
as he said, and the experience of ten years has but confirmed our faith 
in the work thus begun. Not all the Indians who have come since then, 
have had the level-headed sense and determined purpose of those ma- 
ture, well disciplined and well guided young men, it is true. More or 
less prejudice of color has been shown occasionally, by some from Ind- 
ian Territory, where Indians have held slaves, and by some others. 

The vast preponderance of experience has been of harmony and 
mutual helpfulness. The first party of Dakotas that came had not 
been here a month, when they petitioned to have colored room-mates 
in order to get on faster in English and civilized customs. The growth 
of numbers and the necessity of special instruction and management 
have made this no longer possible, and have tended in a degree to 
separation. But it is the universal testimony of all here who have the 
management of both together, that association with his colored 
schoolmates, in the class-room, or workshops, on the farm, in the bat- 
talion, and such social life as they share, is in many ways of direct 
benefit to the Indian ; helping him in English speaking, getting him 
out of his shyness and reticence, setting him an example of industry 
and application, and patient cheerfulness. Col. Stevenson, of the 
Bureau of Ethnology, who has spent thirty years among Indians for 



14 



study of them, remarked upon this here, and brought up the fact that 
the old fur traders always got a Negro if possible to negotiate for 
them with the Indians, because of their "pacifying effect." They 
could manage them better than white men, with less friction. At all 
events, a school-boy fracas is more apt to occur here between Indian 
and Indian, or Negro and Negro, than between Negro and Indian ; is 
in fact almost an unheard of thing between the races. While there is 
not intimacy, there is the best of good feeling, 

The Indian students at Hampton are frequently under the charge 
of our colored graduates. They always get on well. There has been 
no more entirely successful manager of Indians than some of these ; 
for instance, the foreman of our harness shop, some of the colored 
teachers in the night school, the farm instructor, those who had or 
have charge of the boys in the Wigwam, some of the officers of the 
battalion, including some under graduates, and three young women, 
now and formerly in charge to some extent, of the girls in Winona 
Lodge. Pleasant testimony to their appreciation of their associates 
and advantages here, is given by some of the best of our Indian 
graduates (See Contents, for letters from Indian students). General 
social intercourse between the races of opposite sexes is limited and 
guarded. Trouble might come of it. None ever has. The effort is 
to build up self respect and mutual respect. And we believe that 
education of the mind and heart tends to individual morality and race 
purity. 

Our colored students are not all saints, but they are a picked set, 
and vicious ones are summarily sent off, suspended or expelled, The 
record of our colored graduates, both young men and young women, 
has been encouraging in the highest degree. We follow them up after 
leaving school, carefully and constantly. Yearly reports of them are 
made by our "graduates' correspondent." In a more general report 
made in 1882, when our Graduates' Record Book was established, it 
appeared that of 389 graduates and 37 senior under graduates, over 



15 



ninety per cent, had engaged in teaching, and over three-fourths made 
teaching their vocation ; 90 were married ; 153 reported owning land 
or other property, 7 above 100 acres ; 29, land and other property 
valued at over $500, one at $3000; 3 were ministers, 1 a missionary in 
Africa, and 1 a practising physician, who had worked his own way 
through the medical colleges of Syracuse and Buffalo. He is now in 
high esteem in his profession, respected and consulted by the white 
physicians of Montgomery, Alabama. The noblest red man of them 
all would not be much injured by association with any of these, nor 
with Mr. Booker T. Washington, once in charge of boys in the Wig- 
wam, now Principal of the Colored State Normal School in Alabama, 
which he has built up in six years from nothing to an institution on 
the Hampton plan, with 400 students, and 24 teachers and officers, all 
colored, of whom seventeen, including himself and his wife, and the 
treasurer of the school, are Hampton graduates. 

While such work is of course exceptional, that of the great mass 
of the graduates and as many more under graduates who have left 
Hampton has been excellent and there is an interesting and increas- 
ingly successful effort among them to introduce into their own schools 
the principles they have been taught here. Here and there little 
Hamptons are springing up, embodying more or less of the Hampton 
ideas of self help and the training of head, heart and hand. 

The school is situated in the midst of a large Negro population. 
Anxiety has been expressed by some lest the Indian be contaminated 
by its evil influences. Not to compare them with those of the frontier 
or reservation from which the school has taken him, or to inquire to 
what ideal 

— "sequestered spot, 
The world forgetting, by the world forgot,'* 

those who fear for him could transfer him, it may be said that the 
Negro population about us is not so ill thought of by the gentlemen 
of Hampton, clergymen and others, who have lived in it for many 



16 



years, and whose children are growing up in its surroundings. (See 
Contents for letters of Rev. J. J. Gravatt and others; also Report of Vir- 
ginia Legislative Committee.) The fact is that the colored popula- 
tion of Hampton is largely made up— as we have previously noted— of 
the most thrifty and industrious remnant of the "contrabands," most 
of whom were sent back to their old homes by the government's aid 
after the war ended. The growth of the town has made work abund- 
ant. While there is a low set, as in all towns, they have on the 
whole been steadily improving for the last ten years. From the 
top of our barn or church tower, their little homesteads can be seen 
in every direction. Another fact is that the Indian boys do not 
come much into contact with them. The school's weekly holiday 
was changed to Monday, so as not to coincide with the town mark- 
et day, when there is more of drinking and loafing. On the other 
hand, they do come in frequent contact with some of the best white 
people of the town, in the stores and in St. John's Church, where 
many Indians attend, and some sing in the choir. 

Bishop Hare made some pertinent remarks on this point on his 
recent visit to us. He said that he should not choose an ideal commu- 
nity to send Indian students to; they had better learn to recognize and 
stand against the evils which must be met in the world. He thought 
there would be especial advantage for the Indians, who must be poor 
people for some time to come, to be where they could see how poor 
people can make a living, their shifts and resources; bethought a 
Hampton steer-cart a good object lesson for Indians; and. practically, 
he had not ever observed any evil results in the Hampton returned 
students from their associations here — anything that might be called 
" negro vices or faults." On the other hand, he remembered, as we all 
did, an instance of two Indian boys almost ruined by evil companions 
in a white school, who had come up wonderfully and beyond his ex- 
pectation after a year at Hampton. He thought that an Indian boy 
would be more likely to admire and imitate vice in a white man than 



17 



in a colored man. This is in the line of our own experience, indeed. 
The Bishop's repeated testimony to his faith in the school, expressed 
also in his late address the 15th anniversary of his'consecration, will 
be found elsewhere. [See contents.] 

THE HEALTH QUESTION. 

On this very interesting and vital point in Indian education, the 
fairest and most satisfactory course will be to quote the statistics and 
•observations of the school's resident physician, Dr. Martha M. Waldron, 
who has been in charge of its medical and sanitary provisions for the 
last seven years. / 

In preface to her statement, we may say, first, the health question 
for the Indian race is by all accounted a serious one. There are some 
who think that while the census estimates are kept up by increase of 
the half-breeds, the full-blooded Indians are actually dying out. This 
seems to be the case at some of the agencies. Dr. Given, school 
physician at Carlisle, in a recent article in the "Red Man," asserts 
that "one out of every ten Indian children of school age are unfit either 
physically or mentally for attending school and that the large majority 
of these are hopelessly diseased" and need hospital care, for which he 
pleads. Henry Elliott, writing of " Wild Babies" on the reservations, 
in Harper's Monthly, some years ago, said: "Consumption is the 
great regular scourge of the Indian youth. * * They are very 
scrofulous." This is the testimony of ail who have observed and studied 
the subject. Some tribes are doubtless exceptionally healthy. A rem- 
nant may be saved of many. The reasons for their condition may be num- 
erous : vicious or ignorant lives, superstition, utter disregard of the laws 
of health, insufficient nutrition, exposure, and the habit of rolling up 
the head in the blanket to sleep. The transition to civilized life, at best 
a trying one, is made tenfold more so by such conditions. But it must 
be made, and the only thing to do is to do the best to help them through 
it. The agency physician has a trying position. It is not wonderful 
that few good ones can be found to take the places. There has cer- 



18 



tainly been great recklessness in sending diseased Indians to Hampton 
and other schools. Sound Indians may be hard to find, as some say, 
but radically unsound ones should not be sent with a clean health 
record. 

These conditions have greatly hampered the work at Hampton, as 
elsewhere. It has been further burdened here by the special work it 
alone has undertaken, of receiving young married couples and families 
for instruction in housekeeping and domestic life, as well as English 
and trades. Six cottages have been built for such families, and have 
been occupied by a succession of them. Seven Indian children have 
been born here. 

Besides the services of the resident physician, the school has an 
excellent trained nurse in charge of the boys' hospital, and another 
in charge of the Indian girls and women. 

The hospital given by King's Chapel, Boston, is admirably ar- 
ranged and fitted up, and has saved lives of both colored and Indian 
boys. 

MEDICAL STATEMENT 

BY 

DR. M. M. WALDRON, RESIDENT PHYSICIAN. 

It is my experience that the Indians at Hampton, who were sound 
on arrival here, have, as a rule, done well. The deaths which have 
occurred, may fairly be attributed to special constitutional weakness in 
certain cases, and general race tendencies. 

The percentage of deaths among Indians at the school has steadily 
decreased. There has been no death among them since Feb. 2, 1887. 

MORTALITY. 

In the ten years, there have died at the school 31 Indians. Of 
these, three were infants, under the age at which government, at the 
present time, supports pupils here; being respectively eight months, four 
and six years old. Four of them were never upon Government list. 
The two youngest died within two and four weeks of arrival, from ex- 



19 



posure and cold taken on the journey, the third dying within a year 
from hereditary disease evident on arrival. In none of these, could 
sickness and death be ascribed to climatic influences. The fact is 
equally true in regard to many others. In two cases Indians have 
been sent to the school as sound, who have never been able to attend 
a class. 

Of the 22 Indians who have died here, since my connection with 
the school, eight were radically diseased on arrival ; all but one, the 
child above mentioned, consumptives. 

No Indian has been marked "unsound on arrival," except those 
who were undoubtedly radically diseased. There have been many 
other cases in which it would have been perfectly just to record un- 
soundness, since the family history — in one case of every known mem- 
ber of the previous generation having died of consumption — was equiv- 
alent to positive, existing unsoundness, yet none of these are counted 
in our record of "diseased on arrival." Such cases would undoubtedly 
develop phthisis, sooner or later, under any circumstances. 

Of the total 31 deaths, fourteen were of students from Crow Creek 
and Lower Brule agencies (one locality), from which 107 pupils have 
been received. There is undoubtedly some cause in the former or 
present condition of the Indians of these agencies, for their present 
want of vigor and power to resist disease. I have never seen such a 
total absence of physical stamina in an)r other patients. Aside from these 
and the three infants above mentioned, of the 360 Indians received 
from all other sources, 14 deaths have occurred, or one in twenty-five 
and seven-tenths, for a period of ten years, which is an excellent rec- 
ord for any Indian school in the United States. No death has 
occurred among the pupils from Standing Rock. The record from all 
the other agencies has been good; that of the Omaha, Winnebago, and 
Indian Territory agencies, remarkably so. 

RETURNED HOME FOR HEALTH. 

In the ten years, 111 Indian students have been returned to their 



20 



homes before the expiration of the three years for which they were 
sent. Of these, 71 were physically unsound on arrival; four were sent 
back chiefly because of moral worthlessness. Physical unsoundness in 
67 cases consisted in pulmonary disease. It would have been unfair to 
subject to the strain of school life, students with the marked phthisical 
tendencies which these cases presented. Their return home, to- 
gether with the 36 against whom no record was made on arrival, but 
who afterward developed symptoms of consumption, was a precau- 
tionary and humane measure. Most of these students were at Hamp- 
ton over a year, were benefited mentally and morally: the majority of 
them are favorably reported as to conduct ; many are actively at work 
(See Miss Folsom's Report on Returned Students). 

GENERAL HEALTH. 

There is abundant evidence that the general health of Indian stu- 
dents improves at the school. Scrofulous tendencies are more or less 
corrected, and regular habits, exercise, and good food give a firmer 
basis of health. Students who have come from the West in a some- 
what low condition of health have improved here, in cases where im- 
provement could reasonably be expected. This has been notably true 
in regard to the Omahas. 

As a rule, the health of the Indian student improves after the 
second year. If health fails and pulmonary symptoms appear, it is 
almost invariably in the first or second year. After this, which is, for 
many, a great transition period in all respects, the health becomes 
more firm. 

Up to the present school year, the health of every student who 
has returned here for a second term, or who has been at the school 
for over a period of three years, has been unexceptionally good. It 
has been noticeable that the Indians in the Normal School and 
advanced Indian classes are seldom sick. These are students who 
have been a long time at this school or have come from Western 
schools. They have passed through a portion of their transition 



2! 



period and can endure a continued strain. But one death has ever 
occurred in the advanced classes. This student was in confirmed 
phthisis, on arrival, but was in school, though continually failing, for 
nearly two years. 

Indian girls in the school are less subject to sickness than Indian 
boys, because from childhood they have been accustomed to more 
regular occupation, and also from the fact that they are under more 
immediate observation and control. 

CARE OF THE SICK. 

Two trained nurses are employed ; one in care and oversight of 
Indian girls in "Winona Lodge," where hospital rooms are provided, 
and of Indian women and children in the cottages ; and one in charge 
of the " King's Chapel Hospital" for boys. All have access to the 
physician at the three daily " office hours," and at any other time when 
necessary, besides, of course, constant attendance when sick. 

The excellent accommodations of the hospital make it the safest 
and best place for a boy needing any care whatever. As a precaution- 
ary measure, a boy is often sent there to sleep who is in daily attend- 
ance upon his classes, not ill, but needing oversight. This is 
especially the case with Indian boys. While a colored boy can gen- 
erally'be safely sent to his own room, to take his medicine at the 
appointed hours and take care of himself to some extent, an Indian who 
is in danger of taking his entire quantity of medicine at one dose, 
must be put into the hospital where he can be looked after. The 
•' hospital cases" include, therefore, every degree and kind of ailment 
from serious illness to the slightest indisposition. One delicate 
boy may afford many "cases" during the year, being counted as a 
"case" on each appearance in the hospital. For the year ending Oct. 
ist, 1887, 73'Such "hospital cases" of Indian boys are reported. As- 
has been shown, this large number demonstrates, not the gravity or 
comparative amount of sickness among the Indian boys, but the 
great usefulness of the King's Chapel Hospital. It is bright and airy, 



22 

and supplied with attractive reading matter, pictures and games for 
those who are able to use them. The moral advantage of such a 
place over a lonely room is apparent. 

Medical reports, and sanitary inspection and reports of the school 
buildings, grounds, etc, are made monthly by the physican, and oftener 
if required. 

The special diet kitchen and dining room are an important aid in 
care of the sick, convalescent, and delicate. Indian students are 
under especial observation at meals, and any case requiring attention, 
is at once reported to me. If the nature of the case demands it, the 
student is at once put upon special diet for a period as long as desirable- 
There is an average of eleven hundred meals per month during the 
year, served from the special diet to Indians, with a maximum during 
the winter months of from nearly two thousand to nearly three 
thousand per month. In the physical life of our students, no factor is 
more important than this of a well cared for and generous special diet 

The general diet also receives careful attention, with revision and 
improvement as desirable and practicable. About a year and a half 
ago, it was decided to restrict the Indians altogether from the use of 
pork, which they had, before that, had, as the colored students do, in 
alternation with beef. For this purpose, they were given a separate 
dining room. The change has been evidently beneficial in its effect 
upon general health, especially upon scrofulous tendencies. 

The preparation of the general and special diet is under the direct 
supervision of separate and competent heads. 

The special diet is served in a pleasant dining room capable of 
comfortably seating from forty to fifty. Students to whom the gener- 
al diet seems unsuited sometimes remain upon the special diet 
through the entire year. 



23 



The bills of fare for general and special diet are as follows 

GENERAL DIET— (EACH WEEK.) 

Dinner ; 



Breakfast : 

Coffee 

Corn Bread 

Graham " i 

Beef Stew i 



7 mornings. 

6 



Hash, Corned Beef i 

Beans, Baked 3 

Boiled Beef and Potatoes. . 1 
Boiled Beef Hash 1 



Stewed Beef and Vegetables, . . .2 days. 
Boiled " " " ••• 3 " 

Corned " " 1 

Fish, or Clam Chowder, or Mut- 
ton or Oysters i 

Potatoes and Rice ....2 

Potatoes and Hominy 1 

Squash and Rice or Potatoes 1 

Turnips and Hominy • 1 

Cabbage " 1 " 

or Potatoes " 1 

Hulled Corn and Rice 1 

Corn Bread 7 

The intent is to have two vegetables each day, reckoning rice and 
hominy as vegetables. 

Meat is provided twice a day. 

Supper : 

Tea . — 7 nights. 

White Bread 3 " 

Tea Biscuit i 

Family Loaf 2 " 

Family Loaf and Crackers 1 

Syrup.. 7 

Oatmeal and Milk 1 or 2 

In addition to the above, kale, spinach, asparagus, peas, beans, 
and tomatoes, are given in their season. Also melons in great 
abundance, and a limited quantity of strawberries and blackberries. 
(Melons as often as twice a week for a month.) 

Four gallons of milk are used daily for tea and coffee, or when 
condensed milk is used for this purpose, this same quantity is given 
to students to drink. During the spring and early summer, eggs are 
given, to the amount of 100 dozen per month. 



24 



Supper 



For colored students, bacon or fresh pork is substituted for beef, 
at five meals during the week ; three dinners and two breakfasts. In. 
all other respects their table is the same. 

List of articles of special diet provided at the 

SPECIAL DIET. 

As in use for seven years. 
Breakfast : Dinner: 

Beefsteak Roast Beef Bread, 

Oatmeal Chicken Butter, 

Potatoes Rice Tea, 

Beans Potatoes Crackers, 

Bread Sweet Potatoes in season Milk, 

Sutter Squash 3 

Coftee.,. . , Turnips 

Milk Egg Plant, etc 

Soup three days in the week 

to doctor's order : 
Broths constantly. Codfish. 
Beef Tea. " Corn Starch. 

Gruels. Cerealine. 
Oysters. Hominy. 

As much milk as required is used in the special diet. An average 
of about eight gallons a day is used. Students who need it are at 
present receiving from one to two pints daily. This seems a more 
effective use of material than the general distribution of a smaller 
quantity to strong and weak alike. 



Cooked Apples 
Prunes, 

Oranges, « 
Pudding, 
Blanc Mange, 




INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. 

Industrial training has always been a distinctive feature of the 
Hampton school. Its object is, in general, three fold : 

First. — To build up character: stimulate the mind, form habits 
of industry, promptitude, accuracy and self-help. 

Second.— To give the student a means of earning a living. 



25 



Third. — To help him support himself through school. 

The first object is paramount alike for Negro and Indian. Each 
of the others is helpful to it and important ; to the colored student a 
necessity, fortunately for himself. 

From the Indian, the third is lifted by the government's support. 
While this is, for the present, necessary, an act of justice and mercy, it 
is a loss to him of a valuable means of true education and progress. 

The second is necessarily modified by conditions and prospects. As 
long as, whatever the best way may be, the fact is that the most of our 
Indian students return to their Western homes to live, the conditions 
and chances for work open to them there must be taken into serious 
consideration in giving them trades. If an Indian boy is going back 
to an agency where there are no shops, and it is uncertain what ones 
will develop there, or where there are few and small ones, with limited 
places for workmen, it would only prepare disappointment for him to 
perfect him in one kind of work ; it would be better to give him a 
general technical training in the rudiments of several kinds, so that 
he will be wanted as a handy, dextrous fellow, ready to work and 
quick to learn whatever trade is started at his home, whether on a 
reservation or in a pioneer frontier settlement. In answer to a posi- 
tive demand for such training, the Technical Shop was opened at 
Hampton only last year. Before that time the only training shops 
had been regular trade shops. There are still the full number of 
these, training Indian as well as colored students, to trades. The 
theory has always been, and still is, to give every Indian, as far as 
possible, a regular trade, or a good knowledge of farming, or both. 
That is the preference when practicable. The Technical Shop is an 
added feature, lately started. It is in accordance with the most ad- 
vanced ideas of the day in white institutions of education. Twenty- 
three Indians have thus far shared its benefit. It is intended that 
every Indian shall share it, in addition to his regular trade. The 
departments in it are now, carpentry, blacksmithing and wheelwright- 



2t 



ing. The boys take two months at a time in each in rotation. 
There is a room besides for the training of girls in the use 
of common tools, and the principles of carpentry. The senior 
class in the Normal School, both boys and girls, also have weekly 
instruction in this room, which they can turn to practical account in 
their experience as country school teachers, and in repairing and 
keeping up. if not building, their homes and out-buildings. The 
facilities for instruction in regular trades and industries are : 

First. — The Farms. Barn. Poultry and Stock Yards and Farm 
Shops. Blacksmith and Wheelwright. The Home farm has 1 10 acres 
under cultivation ; the Hemenway 400. Horses, stock and poultry 
are raised on the farms. 

Second. — The Indian Training Shops, so named when given 
at a cost of 85,000. to meet the new demand on the coming of the 
Indians to Hampton. Colored and Indian boys here work side by side, 
the Indians always in the large majority. They include Carpenter, 
Shoemaker. Harness. Tinsmith and Painting shops. 

Third.— The Printing Office. 

Fourth. — Engineer s Department, — iron work and care of engine. 

On the farm pay roll in the ten years there have been 208 Indians; 
in the farm shops 38 more. 

On that of the Indian training shops, 119; 66 carpenters. 24 shoe- 
makers. 8 harnessmakers. 16 tinsmiths and 5 painters. 

In the Printing Office. 14 : Engineer's Department, 8. 

There has been all the time more or less interchange, resulting 
from changes of mind or conditions, and some names appear on 
several rolls. Most are on the farm for a time. But the purpose is to 
teach a regular trade. The full three years in either would be barery 
sufficient, with no previous knowledge of English or habits of applica- 
tion. We find the Indian willing to work, often with mechanical 
talent, but fickle and inclined to change about more than is good for 
him. The farmers don't get to know all about Western farming, nor 



'27 



all about Eastern farming, and none of the mechanics do a bit better 
than a white boy would in the same circumstances. But the in- 
structors insist that very many do as well. The farm manager counts 
up twenty as having a good thorough knowledge of all branches of 
ordinary farm work, plowing, planting, etc., and care of stock, milking- 
etc., and a half-dozen who could set up a wheelwright and blacksmith 
shop. He says "many a complete cart has been made by an Indian, 
boy here." The head of the training shops counts seven as compe- 
tent to run a shop for themselves in their various trades, and twelve 
more as first-class apprentices. Many others, he says, would be fair 
ones, able to earn money and improve. In the printing office none 
have taken a full course, but several have made good compositors in 
the short time they were at the trade. Few have stayed long in the 
Engineer's department ; none are independent workers. 

At the present time, there are on the farm roll 22 Indians; in the 
farm shops 6, viz., 3 wheelwrights and 3 blacksmiths. In the Indian 
training shops for regular trades; 23, viz., 1 1 carpenters, 3 painters, 3 
harnessmakers, 4 tinsmiths and 4 shoemakers. Of these, 3 carpenters, 
1 painter and 2 tinsmiths are "first-class apprentices." In the tech- 
nical shop at present writing are 9 carpenters, 7 blacksmiths and 7 
wheelwrights. 

A few extracts from annual reports will show what Indians do 
here in regular trades. Many as good might be quoted from other 
years. 

"The Carpenter Shop, under a white foreman, has employed 
through the year an average of 12 Indian boys, of whom 6 work half 
days, 4 two whole days, and 2 are night students, working all day, 
and 1 working 2 days in the week ; also, 3 colored night students 
The department had the contract of building the new King's Chapel 
Hospital for colored and Indian boys, and has also built four Indian 
cottages, a new oil house and tank house. Its other work has been 
repairing buildings and furniture, making school furniture, 49 new 



beds, 28 tables, 4 seats, etc., and fitting up a Natural History class- 
room." — Report for 1886. 

"The Harness Shop has filled a contract with the Indian Office 
for 325 sets of double plow harness, and 15 sets of buggy- and carriage 
harness. This and a considerable amount of repairing has been done 
under direction of a foreman (a colored student who learned his trade 
here) by 3 Indian apprentices, who have worked half of every day, 1 
colored apprentice working full time, and one student, a skilful 
laborer, working 2 days a week. 

" The artisans take a pride in good work. They like to see a hand- 
some harness growing under their hands. A proud young span of 
colts, raised on the place, that I saw the other day wearing their 

beautiful outfit for the first time, seemed to share the feeling 

&■ 

•The Shoe Shop has made, since July 1st, 1886, 605 pairs of new 
shoes, and repaired 1289 pairs of old ones. It gives employment 
to one journeyman instructor, nine Indian and two colored appren- 
tices, with occasional assistance from two inmates of the Soldiers" Home. 

" The Tin Shop employs one journeyman as instructor, five Indian 
and two colored apprentices. They have, during the year, filled a 
contract with the Indian Onice for over $2,000 pieces of tin ware, 
made and repaired all tin ware required by the school, and put on 
about 6000 sq. ft. of tin roofing. One small Indian, twelve years old, 
does rapid work in making six dozen tin cups a day. 

" The Paint Shop. One journeyman as instructor, with another 
employed during vacation, assisted by one Indian and two colored 
apprentices, have painted the walls and kalsomined the ceilings of 32 
rooms in Virginia Hall, painted the buildings erected this year, var- 
nished all desks, shelves, etc., made in the carpenter shop, and have 
done all necessary repairing and glazing. 

"Mr. McDowell says of the shops under his charge: The char- 
acter of the work done has been, I think in advance of that of any 
previous year. This is due to more careful and systematic instructio n 



29 



The spirit of the work on the part of both Indian and colored has 
been decidedly better than ever before.' " — Report for 1887. 

GIRLS WORK. 

The Indian girls are taught to mend, cut and make their own 
clothing and dresses, to sew by hand and machine, to wash and iron 
their own clothes and take care of their rooms. Prizes are given 
sometimes for neat rooms, and they take pride in them. In the Giris' 
Garden, started last year, they took part with the colored girls, and 
enjoyed it equally. More will be done in the coming season. The 
Indian girl is accustomed to work at home, and in this has an advan- 
tage over her brothers. The girls like the carpentry they are taught 
by a lady teacher. 

WAGES. 

Indian students receive pay according to interest shown, work 
done and progress made ; from one cent to five cents per hour, usually, 
on the farm and in the shops — small boys and new hands at the 
lower rates, naturally. There is extra pay in some cases. One Indian 
is hired by .our farmer, at ten dollars a month— half a dozen would 
be if they were capable or chose to be ; but they usually prefer to 
learn trades, which in the end profit them more. One in the engi- 
neer's department has seventy-five cents a day. In the shoe shops 
where piece work is given out, Negro and Indian are paid the same 
prices. For any "job" the same is paid to both ; day and monthly 
wages differ. The results of their work usually differ about as widely as 
their wages. The rule is to pay the Indians about the actual value of 
their work. It must be remembered that much work in a school like 
this, is given out merely for instruction, and paid for when, as a busi- 
ness matter, it is not needed at all. 

Colored students, who provide for their own board, clothing and 
books, are paid besides board, from four to ten dollars per month for 
their work ; as a rule, at a higher rate than Indians, their skill, endur- 



30 



ance and reliability making their work more valuable to the school, 
though to employ outside hands would be more economical, because 
fewer would be required to do the same work. 

SCHOOL ROOM WORK. 

There need be no question as to the Indian's mind. Its strength 
and weakness is well known ; observing, shrewd, quick and persistent 
in directions where it has been trained for generations — as our fron- 
tier troops and settlers have found sometimes to their cost, and some- 
times to their advantage — slow in getting hold of new ideas, unused to 
steady application, and impatient of control. 

All these and other characteristics work for and against his pro- 
gress in the school room, in acquiring a new language and new 
studies. 

Of the 135 Indian students now at Hampton, 35 are in the various 
Normal school classes, and 100 in the Indian classes. 

The Indian classes are in five grades, usually, from which it 
appears that an Indian coming without any English, can. if continuing 
without interruption, enter the Normal school in five years. But one 
has done just this: a girl from Dakota, of the Ree tribe, half white, 
who, in four years more, graduated, taught in the Indian classes with 
success a year, and is now taking further Normal instruction in the 
State Normal School at Framingham, Mass. (See Contents for her 
letter.) Few stay so long; most of those who get into the Normal 
School enter that or a higher Indian class on arrival. Many have done 
this. 

Those in the Indian classes are in school half a day, morning or 
afternoon, and sa work the other half. The methods of teaching 
are those in modern use for their grades, with adaptations to the con- 
ditions : language and number lessons with objects; geography, with 
moulding sand and map drawing ; reading, arithmetic, history and 
drawing, as they advance. The "advanced class" has a preliminary study 



31 



of the subjects of the Normal junior year, before taking them with 
their colored classmates. 

English speaking is pushed in every way, from first to last. It is 
the law of the school, and, at roll call every night, each reports on his 
or her adherence to it. Rewards, and marks leading to penalties, 
such as loss of half a holiday, are used to emphasize the rule. Admis- 
sion to the " Fancy Work Class," which the girls esteem a great pleas- 
ure, depends on their fidelity to English speech. A visitor who had 
been much among the Indians in the West, recently reported that he 
addressed an Indian boy that he met on our grounds, in his own 
tongue. The boys face brightened, but he answered in English, that 
"there is no Indian talk here." The daily associations with English 
speaking schoolmates of kindly natures, with whom they feel at their 
ease, is a very great help to them in acquiring the language. Not a 
good, but a "usable" knowledge of it can be acquired, on an average, in 
three years. After that the progress is more rapid. There are great 
individual differences of course. 

m 

Those who are in the Normal classes, as a rule, stand well. In 
the annual report of 1885, a more detailed statement as to these was 
made than in any other year, but its main facts hold good for any time. 
It was then stated that: " Of the twenty Indian students in the Normal 
classes, ten are Sioux and one Arikaree, from Dakota ; four Omaha 
and two Winnebago, from Nebraska ; two Sac and Fox and one 
Absentee-Shawnee from Indian Territory. Four are full-blooded 
Indians ; the others of mixed parentage, English or French, and in 
one case Negro, on one side. Most of them knew a little English 
when they came ; fourteen, however, so little that they had to spend 
from one to three years in the Indian preparatory classes, and eight 
have practically learned all their English here. Eleven are in the 
Junior class, four in the Middle, and five in the Senior class, graduating 
this year. 

"They are, for the most part, keeping up well with their respective 



32 



classes. The very fact that they can enter the regular school and pass 
from grade to grade with no more special help than can be bestowed 
by its teachers upon individuals in their large classes, shows, of course, 
that they are, on the whole, good material. 

"Most of them, indeed, are deeply interested in their studies, and 
there is not one named that does not appear up to the average on 
as much as one class roll, though some are poor enough to make their 
promotion doubtful or impossible. Many are above the class 
average. 

'•The spirit of the classes, as between Indian and colored, is in all 
cases excellent. The colored students take evident pleasure in 
encouraging the Indians and having them helped. 

"There is every evidence here that it is entirely practicable to edu- 
cate the Indian, and that association with English-speaking school- 
mates, near himself in advancement, is an aid in the work." 

HOME LIFE AT THE SCHOOL. 
SOCIAL, MORAL, AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES. 

A most important part of the school's work is outside the class- 
room, in bringing right influences and something like true home life 
to bear upon the pupils, perhaps for the first time in their lives, and 
giving them such association with each other as shall be a benefit and 
and not a harm to them. 

The girls have the advantage of being lodged in the same house, 
Winona Lodge, (see frontispiece), with their teachers and matrons. 
They are encouraged to feel that the whole house, in a sense, belongs 
to them, and that they have both responsibility and interest in keeping 
it clean, orderly and attractive. Much ambition is shown in this and 
in the care of their own rooms, which only two, or very occasionally, 
three girls occupy together. There is daily and weekly inspection of 
rooms by a teacher. For several years a happy thought has been car- 
ried out, of appointing some of the older girls captains over companies 



COJ^TEJMTS 



Frontispiece.— View of school from opposite shore of Hampton River with 
condensed statistics on leaflet. 

Revised record of returned students, up to April 1889, and statistics.— Pages 
2, 3, 4 of cover. 

PAGE. 



Preface, - " *■_*• " ~ 3 

Ten Years' Work for Indians, - - - - - 7 
Origin and First Work for Freedmen, 

The New Call to Work for the Indian, - - 9 

Contact of Races, ... - - 12 

The Health Question, - - - - 17 

Medical Statement, - - - - - - 18 

Industrial Training, - - 24 

School Room Work. .... - 30 

Home Life in the School, 

(Social, Moral and Religious Influences,) - 32 

Indian Outings, ------ 36 

The School's Object, - 37 

The School as it Stands, ----- 38 

For the Future, - - 4° 

Honor to whom Honor, - - - 40 

Report on Returned Indian Students, - - 42 

Tabulated Reports of Agents, - - - 46 

Letters from Indian Graduates, - 47 

From T. W. Alford, - - - - - 47 

From Marguerite La Flesche, - - 51 

From Susan La Flesche, .... 55 

From Annie Dawson, - - - - - 57 

From Josephine Barnaby, - 59 

From John Downing, • - - - - 60 

Outside Testimony, ------ 61 

1 From Miss Alice C. Fletcher, ' " 61 

From Bishop Hare, - - - - 66 m 

From Mr. Herbert Welsh, - - - - - 68 

From Rev. J. J. Gravatt and other citizens of Hampton, 69 

Reports on Indian " Outings," - - - 72 

Letters and Reports from Returned Students, 74 

Record of Carlisle Students, - - - - - 7 78 

The Agents' Opinion of Eastern Education, 79 

From the Legislature of Virginia, - 80 



Principal, S. C. ARMSTRONG. 
Vice Principal, H. B. Frissell. 
ireasurer, F. N. Gilman. 



Hampton Normal and kgml 

Devoted to the Ne :i 



TRUSTEES. 



Mr. Elbert R. Monroe, Pres-t, Connecticut. 
Rev. M. E. Strieby, D. D., Vice-Pres't, N. Y. 
Hon. R. W. Hughes, Second Vice-Prest, Va. 
General S. C. Armstrong, Virginia. 



General J. F. B. Mars 
Rev. Henry- W. Foote 
Mr. Robert C. Ogden, 
Hon. Lewis H. Steine 
Mr. James M. Brown. 



11 FOR THE INDIAN, LABOR MUST BE,— FOR £ 





Winona Lodge : 4i Indian Girls. Virginia Hall: 123 Colored Girls. Library and Offices. Stone Hall 

Griggs Hall: 7 Teachers. Principal's House. King's Chapel Hospital, in rear. Wigv |E 

Colored Ghis Cortage: 57 Gymnasium, in rear. 



Six Cottages for Indian Families in rear. 



In the rear are Barn, Stables, Carpente J.i: 



150 acres of land for Dairy. Truck and general Farming, e 

The above named buildings are used as follows : 
Academic Hall — Class rooms : top story, boy's dormitories. 
Virginia Hall— Colored girls' dormitories, teachers' rooms, dining rooms and 
kitchens lor teachers, students and for pupils on special diet. 
Cottage for Colored girls; teachers' rooms. 
Laundry and Bath-rooms. 

Winona Lodge — Indian girls' dormitory and teachers' rooms; with laundry, 
assembly rooms, infirmary, and small laundry for special instruc.ion of^ Indian 

girls. 

Indian Cottages for Indian families. 

Indian Work Shops — Carpentering, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, shoemak- 
ing, harnessmaking, and tinsmithing trades taught. 

Technical Shop — For teaching the principles of trades to boys. Carpentry, 
blacksmithing and wheelwrighting, to which brickmaking and bricklaying are to 
be added. Girls' class in carpentry. 

Huntington Industrial Works — Steam saw mill, and wood working, by hand 
and by machinery; southern pine chiefly used; about two million feet yearly. 

Pierce Machine Shop—\^ox\i in iron, bone mill, etc, — Corliss engine. 

Stone Memorial Building — Printing office and girls' industries. Practice 
school. Colored boys' dormitories in upper stories. 

The Memorial Church and the Library. 

King's Chapel Hospital, for boys. 

" Wigwam" for Indian boys and the Marquand and Graves cottages for Col- 
ored boys. 

Barn. Farm Shops— for blacksmithing and wheelwrighting. 



ural Institute, Hampton, Va. 



md Indian Races. 



Mass. Mr. Charles L. Mead, New York. 

D., Mass. Mr Moses Fierce, Connecticut, 

lsylvania. Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D. D., Mass 

iryland. Mr. George Foster Peabody, New York. 

York. Col. Thomas Tabb, Virginia. 

I NEGRO, LABOR MUST BE FREE." (Garfield.) 



OUR NEEDS. 

ist. Annual Scholarships of $70. 
2nd. Permanent Scholarships of $1,500. 
3rd. Gifts for the general work of the School. 
4th. A partial Endowment Fund of $500,000. 
Amount to be annually raised from charity$6o,ooo. 

Hon. Amzi Dodd, L. L. D., New Jersey. 
Rev. C. H. Parkhurst, D. D., New York. 
Rev. W. N. McVickai, D. D. Pennsylvania. 




[plate from the "christian union."] 
ting & Tailoring: Dormitories, 85 Boys. Graves and Marquand Cottages: 123 Colored Boys. Pierce Machine Shop. 
7 Indian Boys. Academic Hall— Class Rooms: 45 Boys in Attic. Parsonage. Huntington Industrial "Works, 

emorial Chapel. Technical Shop and Training Shop, in rear. Saw Mill and Wood Working Shop, 

icksmith, Wheelwright, Tin, Shoe, and Harness Shops. 19 Boys' room in Tower. 

Hemenway Farm" of 550 acres, 4 miles distant, is cultivated by students. 

Gymnasium for boys' drill, girls' calisthenics and general exercises. 
Green House — Girls and boys taught gardening. 

Primary Department, The "John G. Whittier," formerly known as the 
"Butler" school, stands in the rear — 300 children attending; a fine new building 
with kitchen garden, sewing and carpentry classes. 

Lessons in carpentry are given weekly in the Technical Shop -to both boys 
and girls of the Senior Class, and also to the Indian boys and girls. 

In addition to the sewing and tailoring taught in the Industrial Room, the 
girls of the Senior Class and Indian girls are taught to cut and fit by "Rood's sys- 
tem of drafting." 

Cooking lessons are given daily, morning and afternoon, to girls of both races. 

Four days in the week the girls have Light Gymnastics at 4 p. m, in the Gym- 
nasium. Girls' Garden; three acres cultivated by gills. 

The four cadet companies drill each one day in the week from 4 to 5. Bat- 
talion drill on Friday from 4 to 5 p. m. 



Session of 1888-9; 

21st Year of the School: nth Year of its Work for Indians. 

Negro students, 460 ; Indian students, 142 ; total 602. All but 12 are board- 
ers and represent 13 States and Territories ; average age 17 years. Officers, teach- 
ers and employees 83. (Industrial training combined with education from books 
requires two full sets of teachers. Separate Day School, Night School and Indian 
School makes necessary a large corps). 



The 2rfampt<m -^formal | Agricultural institute 

Opened in April, 1868, is chartered by special act of the General Assembly of 
Virginia; is free from permanent debt, exempt from taxation, and has been built 
up at a cost of orer $500,000. Its property is the gift of friends, and is owned by 
a Board of seventeen Trustees, who represent six religious denominations; it is a 
private corporation; not a government institution. It is undenominational, though, 
earnestly and actively Christian. While receiving from the State of Virginia, as an 
Agricultural School for Negroes, $10,000 a year; and from the Government, $20,000 
a year, for the personal expenses of 120 Indians (the rest of the 142 In- 
dians being supported by charity); it depends on the gifts of its friends for two- 
thirds of its support, and must raise yearly $60,000, which is done by $70 scholar- 
ships and by gifts for general purposes from charity. About $98,000 a year is the 
annual cost. 

The plan of the school is education by self help ; from $46,000 to $50,000 being 
yearly earned by Colored students in the various labor departments, who thus pay 
for board, books and clothing, but not for tuition ($70 a year), which is provided 
by friends. 

It aims, by training the hand, the head and the heart, to fit selected youth of 
the Negro and Indian races to be examples to, and teachers of, their people, 
Alread^over 600 colored and 150 qualified Indisfl^ workers have been sent tc the 
Southern and Western fields, helping their^people, whose condition calls urgently 
for a practical education. Citizenship is upon the Indian for better or worse. On- 
ly national aid and private benevolence combined can lift him to a Christian civ- 
ilization. 

(The Crmtthevn ^Uorlivvt an 

AND II AMPTOX SCHOOL RECORD, ($1.00 A TEAR). 

a twelve page monthly paper ( reduced to eight pages from July to October ), is 
printed on the Hampton Normal School Steam Press, by" Negro and Indian stu- 
dents. On the eight pages of general matter, the Negro, the Southern, and race 
and social questions generally are discussed. Stories of Cabin and Student life 
and others of local coloring are told, and graduates of the School relate their ex- 
perience as teachers. Four or five pages are devoted wholly to the Indian ques- 
tion. Incidents of Indian life in the school, letters and reports from Indian stu- 
dents who have left, and from Agents, Missionaries and others, add to its interest. 

Talks and Thoughts is a small sheet edited and printed by Indian students at 
Hampton. The Alumni Journal is edited by resident colored graduates. Speci- 
mens of the Southern Workman and the other papers, or of the School's charter 
and full Annual Reports will be sent on application. 

S. C. ARMSTRONG, Principal. 

FORM OF BEQUEST. 
I give and devise to the Trustees of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural 
Institute at Hampton, Pa., the sum of dollars, payable, 

tc, eetc. 



33 



of younger and newer pupils, to be helpful, and in a degree responsible 
for them, trying in various ways to be real " Winona "—elder sisters. 

In their " Wigwam " (see frontispiece) the Indian boys are also lodged 
in separate rooms, not more than two in each, with a janitor from their 
own number. They also take care of their own rooms, which are daily 
inspected, and many are models of neatness and order. Besides the 
Indian janitor, an officer of the school has special supervision of the 
Wigwam, usually rooming there. Two of the colored graduates of the 
school have, in years past, been peculiarly efficient and successful in 
this position. It is a very important feature, and it is hoped to make 
it for the future stronger than ever. An ex-student of the school is 
also doing excellent work in charge of the little boys' division. A great 
improvement has been recently made in making communication be- 
tween the three divisions of the Wigwam, and putting its whole home 
life under the charge of a lady. Her pleasant sitting-room, to which 
all have access, is close to that of the little boys, and opens into the 
common sitting-room, which has been enlarged and refurnished, and 
with its adjoining library, its melodeon, and games, and her wise and 
friendly guidance, is a most humanizing, civilizing influence. Here the 
morning and evening roll-call and family prayers are had, the weekly 
prayer-meetings, and other meetings, and the boys' "debating society," 
where the rule, made by themselves, is, that every one who attends 
must say something, and say it in English. 

The combined meetings of the Indian boys and girls are held in 
Winona Lodge, where the girls, with their teachers, act as hostesses. 
Here are held their common temperance meetings, lend-a-hand clubs, 
(which sent last year a Christmas box to each Indian graduate who is 
teaching), and social gatherings, once in two or three weeks, usually. 
The Indians in the normal classes belong also to their debating socie- 
ties, and many attend and take part in the general Sunday morning 
prayer-meeting in Virginia Hall, the meetings and mission work of the 
" Young Peoples' Christian Association," and the school entertainments 



34 



and social gatherings in the gymnasium, which is the only hall large 
enough to gather all socially. Most of their social life., however, is 
among themselves. Under proper supervision, the co-education of the 
sexes is esteemed a most valuable part of their training. Respect for 
the women of their race is essential to its elevation. Such develop- 
ment of courtesy is encouraged as induces the boys to hasten over to 
Winona Lodge on a rainy day to escort the girls to school under their 
umbrellas and cam,- their books for them. They are seated at the same 
tables, and recite in the same classes. It is a great disgrace and punish- 
ment for a boy to be removed from a table because he has failed in 
respect or courtesy to any girl there. 

The discipline of Indians requires patience, tact, and firmness. 
Not all succeed in it with the best intentions. Real interest in the 
pupils, impartiality, strength and wisdom, are essential. Mistakes may 
be made arising from imperfect understanding of each other's language. 
Harshness and weakness are each fatal to the best results. Constant 
occupation is a great help. In this, as in other respects, the girls have 
an advantage in the more continuous supervision of their teachers. 
The military organization of the boys in the general school battalion 
is a great advantage to them. The "officers" court,'' which tries and 
adjudicates minor offenses, subject to and usually approved by the 
Faculty, is made up of both the colored and Indian student officers. 
In adition to this the Indian boys have a •'council," consisting of five 
of their own number elected by themselves, before whom any can lay 
any matter for advice and explanation or interpretation. Frequent 
personal talks are held by the Principal with the council, especially with 
the boys or students in general, and they have constant access to the 
lady in charge. While suspension or expulsion is the all-sufficient, 
severest punishment for colored students, it is impracticable as a pun- 
ishment, for it would be none, to a refractor}* Indian. Restriction of 
liberty is a corresponding one for him, and, as in even* community, a 
degree of severity in one case may save many. But the great reliance 



35 



for improvement in general is on personal influence, the moral atmos- 
phere, and well occupied, cheerful lives. It is a significant fact that no 
complication or difficulty in the discipline of either the Negro or Indian 
part of the school has arisen from the presence of the other. It is evi- 
dent to all workers here that the influence of their cheerful, good- 
tempered, earnest and industrious Negro schoolmates and fellow work- 
men is a positive advantage to the Indians. 

In the religious work for the Indian, the school chaplain, Rev. H. 
B. Frissell, and the Rev. J. J. Gravatt, pastor of St. John's church, 
Hampton, have worked together most harmoniously and efficiently. 
The Indians coming from agencies under the care of the Episcopal 
Mission, attend St. John's church on Sunday morning, where several 
sing in the choir; those from Roman Catholic agencies are sent under 
escort to attend mass when held at the Soldiers' Home. All are re- 
quired to attend the services at the school, in the church and Sunday 
school. There has been marked response to religious influences. Many 
have united with the school church, and many have been confirmed at 
St. John's, and have shown a new purpose in their lives, which has 
not been lost in the temptations and difficulties of their lives after 
leaving school ; nor are those who leave lost sight of. Constant com- 
munication is kept up by visits to the agencies, and letters to the agents, 
missionaries, and returned students, with such counsel and help as 
shows them they are not forgotten. We call special attention to the 
report of the Graduates' correspondent, Miss C. M. Folsom, upon 
Returned Students. 

A novel feature of the school home life is in the six little cottages 
for Indian families, which are ranged beside "Winona Lodge." Two 
of them are occupied by students who are at Hampton for a second 
term, having married after completing their first three years. One 
couple are both such Hampton students. The husbands go regularly 
to school and learn trades ; one, a carpenter, did much of the work of 
building his cottage. The wives are expected to go to school as much 



36 



as they can with the care of their children, or to be taught at home, 
and to be instructed in their domestic duties. They take their dinners 
m Virginia Hall, but provide their own breakfasts and suppers, the 
husband to do the man's work of the house. While the cottages add 
much to the work and care of the school, it is believed that they have 
done good, and will do more, with careful selection of material. Two 
of the families who have returned to the West, have started homes of 
their own under the wise help of the Home Building Department of 
the Womans' National Indian Association, and have done remarkably 
well. (See Miss Fletcher's letter.) 

INDIAN OUTINGS. 

Every year, from twenty-five to thirty of our Indian students, both 
boys and girls, spend the entire summer vacation, from the middle of 
June to the first of October, in the families of Northern farmers, 
chiefly in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. No better school of life 
could be found for them, and most excellent results to health, intelli- 
gence and morale have followed, for the Indians, with increased 
interest and friendliness for their cause in the communities receiving 
them. A few have stayed for a year at a time ; two boys and one 
girl are doing so now, in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Going 
chiefly for the vacation only, some being quite young, and some of 
delicate health, they have not usually gone as full hired hands, but 
with the stipulation that they should have a weekly half holiday, be 
kept busy as they were able, instructed in a variety of work, as would 
not be practicable if they were on a strict business basis ; to be taken 
into the family, taught evenings if able, kept well behaved, their 
clothes in order, and to be kindly looked after in all ways ; their 
necessary outfit of clothing to be supplied by the school. Further 
than this, the matter of remuneration was left to the discretion of the 
individual farmers, in consideration of the value of the work done; 
thus to avoid over pressure of the student, and create a basis rather 
of friendly interest in his employers. Of twelve girls sent last sum- 



37 



mer, all but one received gifts of clothing and of money from $i to $5. 
Of the boys, four, who were small or delicate, received board and 
instruction only ; four received respectively $10, $12, $14, and $15 at 
the end of the season ; four received $1 a week ; five from twenty-five 
to fifty cents a week ; one only fifty cents during the season ; one, who 
at his own choice, worked on full time as a hired hand, received $13 a 
month. From the reports of the farmers, the students, with one ex- 
ception, made the best record of any party ever sent out. 

With Government permission, and aid for transportation only, 
which has been applied for by the School, fifty more could, after a 
little preliminary schooling, be readily placed in good homes in farm- 
ing communities in New England, and at points much nearer Hamp- 
ton, receiving wages, and what is more important, practical instruction 
and good influences, and in full charge and oversight by the school, 
It rests with Government to give so many more the chance. 

I HE SCHOOL'S OBJECT IN ITS INDIAN WORK. 

Hampton's work for Indians is, and has always been, done to fit 
them for the duties of life and citizenship anywhere, — the world 
before them, as to all American citizens. They are, and are encour- 
aged to feel, free to choose their own homes where they will. But in 
the exercise of that choice, the fact is that they will generally go to 
their own people. Home ties draw them strongly, as they do all of us, 
In view of this fact of their nature and human nature, the constant 
effort is made to inspire them with a missionary sentiment, itself the 
strongest possible educator and elevator and strengthener of the 
human character. When the American Board withdrew its support 
from the Hawaiian mission, while the native churches declined, the 
handful of native missionaries they had sent out to the Southern 
Pacific Islands stood firm in the midst of the most corrupt and savage 
paganism. The Hampton colored graduates, young men and young 
women, scatter into the darkest places in the South, cut off often 
from association with any but those far below them in education, 



38 



civilization and morality, and maintaining their own character, are 
leaders and lights to their people ; stronger men and women than 
some who are working only for their own advancement. " He that 
loseth his life shall find it," is not a mere sentiment, but the most 
practical of truths. 

Not ail who return West have stamina to stand against the temp- 
tations of reservation life. It must be remembered that not all would 
withstand those of civilized life; or could bear its severe competitions. 
Hampton's effort is not to push the Indian back into barbarism, but 
to make the best of facts as they are, and to follow him up wherever 
he goes, with a helping hand ; to make him feel that he is not forgotten 
or counted out ; that Hampton expects every one to do his best. 

THE SCHOOL AS IT STANDS. 

Responding to the call for the Indian, while still increasing its 
efforts for the Negro, the School has passed through another decade. 
The results show the value of each work, and of the influence each 
has had upon the other. 

It has now an enrolment of 469 Negro students, and 136 Indians . 
total 605. All but 23 are boarders, and represent 13 States and Ter- 
ritories ; the Indians representing 14 tribes. In the Primary Day 
School and Training School on the place, for which a beautiful new 
building has been given by friends of Hampton Institute, to super- 
sede the old " Butler," 350 colored children are taught for five months 
at expense of the county ; for three more at that of the Normal 
School, which owns the building and provides the teachers. This 
makes a total of over 900 under instruction on our grounds, The 
officers and teachers of the Normal School number 65, one of them 
superintending also the primary school, and having under her five 
teachers, four of them graduates of Hampton Institute. 

Among the teachers employed, the best, varied talent of college 
and Normal School graduates is represented, as well as much of 
general culture and missionary devotion. 



39 



The industrial department has developedjgreatly, with fully 
equipped shops, where full instruction is given to boys of both races in 
regular trades, viz,: carpentering, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, 
shoemaking, harnessmaking, tinning, iron and wood working, print- 
ing and tailoring, besides farming and care of horses and stock. A 
technical shop for teaching the principles of various trades to those 
mot apprenticed to any regular one, and to all Indian boys in addition 
to one regular one, has lately been added, and at present includes 
carpentry, blacksmithing and wheelwrighting. Bricklaying is to be 
added. Girls of both races are instructed in the principles of car- 
pentry, and are taught sewing, dressmaking, cooking, gardening and 
house and laundry work. 

The School holds now a property which has cost over $400,000, 
and is free from permanent debt. Of real estate there are 700 acres in 
two good farms; the "Home," of 150 acres, and the "Hemenway" 
farm, four miles distant, of 550. 

Of buildings, there are 19 large ones, thirteen of which are brick, 
(7,000.000 bricks have been used, made on the school grounds) and 
many smaller ones, including six cottages for Indian families (see 
frontispiece and leaflet). Of outfit, there is machinery and apparatus 
equipping the shops and school buildings, and supplying steam, water 
and gas to the entire place. 

Over 600 full graduates have gone out. Of the 537 now living, 
three-fourths are teaching ; and about half as many under graduates 
teach. At a low estimate, 15,000 children have been under their care 
the current year. All are in cordial relations with the best element 
of the white and colored races about them, and receive their cordial 
encouragement and moral support. They have many difficulties, but 
no grievances; not a serious one has been reported in the past twenty 
years. Very few have failed to do creditably. They are looked after, 
and many visit the school, particularly at the triennial alumni meet- 
ing They appear well. Many are in business; some in higher insti- 



40 



tutions of learning ; some are ministers, lawyers or physicians ; many 
are married, and many own property. A great many are both teachers 
and farmers, and in their own schools and lives illustrate the influence 
of the Hampton training. 

The latest statement of the record of Indian students is given 
below, in Miss Folsom's report. The test of the school is in the 
result of its work for both races. 

FOR THE FUTURE. 

Assured that the Indian, for generations at least, and even when 
absorbed into American life, will need practical Christian education, 
and knowing that the Negro is here to stay and to increase, we assert 
without hesitation the need of permanent provision for the education 
of teachers and leaders for both races ; and ask of their friends an 
endowment for Hampton's work that shall place it on a perpetual 
foundation, to stand forever for the idea of education by self-help — 
the training of head, hand and heart. 

HONOR TO "WHOM HONOR. 

While recounting the ten years work for Indians, from St. Au- 
gustine to Hampton, Carlisle, Forest City, Lincoln Institution and 
elsewhere East and West ; rejoicing in the wonderful growth of pub- 
lic sentiment which has been at once its outcome and encouragement, 
and looking with hope and courage to the future, it should 
never be forgotten what long years of preliminary labor and devotion 
prepared a highway in the wilderness for the chariot wheels of pro- 
gress. 

The good and great work of the Christian missionary in the 
West is acknowledged by all observers. Its fruit is seen at White 
Earth and Devil's Lake and Standing Rock, and Sisseton and Omaha 
and Anadarko; in the schools at Santee and Yankton and Cheyenne 
River and Oahe ; at these and at many other points ; it was graphic- 



41 



ally portrayed by Helen Hunt in her story of the good Father Salvier- 
derra and the Mission Indians ; it makes part of the romance of our 
history in the story of Pere Marquette, missionary and explorer. 

The names of Riggs and Williamson and Whipple and Hare, and 
of every other man or woman who has gone forth, whether in 
priest's gown or Quaker's garb, or citizens' dress, to give a life to 
this pioneer work of Christian civilization, should be written not in 
heaven alone, but also in the grateful memory of all who reap the 
harvest for which they broke the soil and planted the seed. 



♦ 



Report on Returned Indian Students. 



BY CORA M. FOLSOM. 



Hon. J. D. C. Atkins, Com. Ind. Affairs, Washington, D. C. 
Dear Sir: 

In reply to your request that I write you a '" letter," giving the 
result of my work in following up the Indian pupils who have returned 
from Hampton to their homes, I do so so with pleasure, endeavoring 
to be as brief as possible. 

First, I should state that I have been eight years connected with 
the Hampton school, and therefore am personally acquainted with all 
but five of the pupils who have been there during that time, and that 
Gen. Armstrong, feeling that these pupils need our care almost as much 
after they have left us as when they are under our guidance, has given 
me time and every advantage in his power to follow and help them, 
both directly and through friends, making this work a department of 
the school. 

It is my plan to keep in communication with all, good and bad, and 
to make them feet that they are still one with us : that we are expect- 
ing them to put into practice the lessons they have been taught, and that 
we stand ready and are glad to help them when possible. The result 
is most gratifying. Letters full of gratitude for advantages not always 
appreciated while within reach, letters from those in perplexity and 
doubt, from those in temptation, and from those who have fallen, all 
give a chance for the " word in season." or for the helping hand to be 
offered at the right time. The letters are, in fact, just such as children 
might write to parents in whose love and judgment they had perfect 
faith. Some cannot and some do not write, but they are not many. 

Besides the correspondence with pupils, we try to keep in commu- 



43 

nication with all the agents and missionaries, most of whom we know 
personally from our very frequent visits among them. From reports 
they give us, and from our own personal knowledge, I make up every 
year a record in which they are graded as " excellent," " good," " fair," 
" poor," and " bad." 

' On the roll of " excellent" I put only those who have done remark- 
ably good work, those whose influence is by nature and circumstances 
very strongly for good. They are generally those who have had more 
than ordinary advantages. They number 36. 

By "good," I mean those who are living civilized Christian lives; 
those whose influence in their community is strongly on the side of 
right, and who are examples worthy of being followed. They number 
103. 

Under " fair " I place those who live a fairly proper life ; who mean 
to do well, but from sickness, peculiar temptations, or unfortunate 
circumstances, do not at all times exert a good influence. Many who 
would be on the "good" or "excellent" list are placed here because 
they have married in the " Indian way." 

Those recorded under "poor" are the shiftless or fickle ones. 
Many do well ; go to church, work their land, and appear very well for 
a time, then turn about, go to Indian, or, what is far worse for them' 
half-breed dances, and so spoil all the good influence they have really 
tried to exert. Those who have been known to drink or refuse to 
marry legally are on this list. Many were poor wrecks when they came 
to us and soon returned. 

Of the four recorded "bad," one has had many advantages, though 
always unreliable, and left her position as teacher to go off with a 
married man. Two others are girls of similar character, but with not 
the advantages of the first. The other is a half.breed boy, now in the 
penitentiary for stealing liquor. He has been promoted to the 
position of cook, and is reported by the warden as a hopeful case. 



♦ 



44 



The following is the record just revised 

Excellent, 36 ] 

Good, 103 1S6 doing well. 

Fair, 47 

Poor, 20 
Bad. 4 



Total. 210. 



24 doing poorly. J 
In the first years of the work, I confess I did not believe these 
boys and girls could stand the test about to be applied to them. Ex- 
perience has, as you know, proved the doubter wrong, and the wonder 
still is not that some fall, but that the majority has stood as well as 
it has. . 

I have taken to their homes bright, intelligent, womanly girls — 
girls who could cook, wash and iron, keep a neat house, and make 
their own clothes. The fathers - house" in which I must leave the 
daughter is so-called civilized, but it has a mud roof, that in rainy 
weather leaks mud. an earth floor, no table but a trunk, no bed but a 
pile of quilts and blankets, almost no cooking utensils, no wash-tubs, 
and no dishes to speak of. There is but one room, possibly two. and 
there parents, brothers and sisters, and all sorts and conditions of 
relatives must be accommodated. The little trunk of clothes is soon 
more or less scattered among admiring friends and almost empty- 
handed this one civilized woman must begin the reconstruction of 
her household. Without money or sympathy this is slow work, and 
a casual visitor seeing the girl reports that she has gone "back to 
Indian ways,*' and. as far as they can see. she has. but she will not 
always stay there. History shows that she will, sooner or later, rise to 
her level. 

The boys have more resources, and though they cannot do as 
much with the old home, are freer to make new ones, and this they 
generally do. 

I know thirty-three married couples who are doing well ; others I 
am not so sure about. Two married men at Omaha have built them- 
selves model houses — models not onlv for Indians, but according to 



45 

Nebraska papers, for white people as well. One at Pine Ridge is noted 
for the number and beauty of its house-plants, and others are far 
above the average. 

The idea of Hampton is that its students should be fitted for 
leaders of their people at just this crisis in their history, when earnest, 
i ntelligent men are so much needed. The first man among the Shaw- 
nees to take up his allotment is a Hampton boy, whose contact with 
eastern civilization had enabled him to see, as others cannot, the wis- 
dom of such a movement. 

Being thrown with thrifty farmers, as the Carlisle and Hampton 
boys are, is of inestimable benefit to them, and they learn almost un- 
consciously their most valuable lessons there. 

Three years is far too short a time to convert a blanket Indian 
into an English-speaking civilized man, or to form the character of a 
young boy, so that by returning to his home in his early teens he will 
be able to withstand the degrading influences thrown about him. We 
encourage the most promising to return to us for a second term. 
Thirty-four have done so, and they are our most hopeful pupils, under- 
standing better their needs and appreciating their advantages. None 
have died during a second term, and only one after his return. 

It would doubtless be a saving of expense if the first two or three 
years of schooling could be spent nearer home, and the eastern schools 
filled with only those who had stood the physical and mental test of 
the home schools. Of the sixty-three who have died at home since 
1878, only five had any schooling before coming to us (one of them an 
epileptic), and only two who have come to us from other schools have 
died at Hampton. This would seem to prove that the eastern schools 
are better fitted to take advanced than wild Indians. 

In spite of all obstacles the eastern schools have had to contend 
with in the past, in the selection of material and in other ways, their 
superiority over any others in the developing of character and in giving 
the best practical training and experience, is beyond question. In the 



46 



East, the student is brought into contact with a class of teachers and 
friends that bring out his strongest qualities, and he learns from the 
most practical experience a civilization and refinement that it would 
be impossible to acquire in a school nearer home. I am a firm believer 
in day and boarding schools at the West ; but I do know that such 
schools as Carlisle and Hampton come nearer supplying the need of 
the Indians at just this time than any other. 

When I remember your interest in these returned pupils. I feel 
that I have left unsaid much that is due them. Some cases would 
show better than I fear I have, the surroundings, the difficulty of the 
work and the needs of the young people, but I dare not take more 
time without further permission. 

I have purposely left out much that might be said of the Indian 
boy on his return home, as that is so much written and talked about, 
and take the space to give some of the difficulties that attend both, 
the girls in particular, and to show why transient visitors are so apt to 
report them as having gone back to the blanket." 

OFFICIAL REPORTS FROM AGENTS ON INDIAN STUDENTS RETURNED 
FROM HAMPTON. 

By the courtesy of the Hon. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 
Miss Folsom was permitted to see the official reports made by Indian 
Agents upon the returned Indian students in their agencies. Their 
statements, for which we have no responsibility, are very interesting 
to us. Those as to Hampton students are the following : 



AGENCY 



Fort Berthold D. T 

Standing Rock, " 

Cheyenne River, " 

Crow Creek and Lower Brule,... " 

Yankton.. " 

Omaha and Wi nnebago, Xeb . 



' \r. 
O 

& 
£ 

o 
m 


B « 

a « 

X 

Sh 


CJ 

03 
O 

"zn 

CD 

J3 

(0 


Doing well. 


Not doing well. 


N 

c .- 

ci 

< 


18 




3 


9 


1 


.60 


64 


I 


1 


40 


0 


■97M 


43 




6 


18 


1 


.66% 


104 




36 


46 


4 


•657 


56 


38 


12 


22 


5 


•578 


&6 




0 









Letters from Indian Graduates of Hampton. 



Wt can fully endorse the writers of these letters as to character and work. 



A LETTER FROM THOMAS WILDCAT ALFORD, OF THE ABSENTEE 
SHAWNEE TRIBE, GRADUATED 1 882. 



Shawneetown, I. T., Feb. 6, 1888. 

Gen. S. C. Armstrong : 

My Dear Sir: — I have just received your letter asking me to 
make a statement of the course taken by Hampton and other Indian 
students since their leaving school, and other facts relating to them. 
I will cheerfully comply with the request, though unfortunately I feel 
unable to do justice to several who are not near me enough to learn 
how they are. Therefore my report will be confined only to those 
who are immediately in my vicinity. 

Of students that have returned from Hampton I may say, all with 
one or two exceptions, are doing well, some very well ; and there are 
others who are doing equally as well, perhaps, but of whom I cannot 
make statement accurately for reason above mentioned. The follow- 
ing are the names of the Indian students in this vicinity, not including 
myself : 

John Downing, John King, Frank Chisholm, Antoine Gokey, 
Robbie Canalez, Mary King, Hattie Miles and Nellie Keokuk. 

( )f these who have done very well indeed are John Downing, 
John King, Mary King and Hattie Miles— 4; fairly well, Antoine 
Gokey and Nellie Keokuk — 2 ; indifferent, but seem coming up, Frank 
Chisholm— 1 ; hopeless, Robbie Canalez— 1. More than half of these, 
I think, did not receive the three years training allowed them, and if 
I remember aright, Antoine Gokey and Robbie Canalez were sent 
home for bad conduct. 



48 

John Downing, ever since he left school, has been working faith- 
fully, and is now married and happy, living in Wichita agency, and is 
quite a successful cattle-raiser. 

John King has been a faithful clerk here in an agency trader's 
store, getting from 835 to S-P per month, by which he is enabled to 
stock his farm of 80 acres— all under fence and cultivated— and sells 
a great deal of corn. He is the only one here who is quite successful 
in retaining his inheritance. 

Frank Chisholm is not so successful. He had too much of this 
world's goods awaiting him when he came from school, so that all he 
has done is to sell out his substance, until now he has but little. 
Frank is not particularly bad in any way, and for what indifference, 
there is in him his brothers, who are notorious rough characters, are 
responsible. 

Robbie Canalez was quite young when he came home, and as his 
mother was a bad character, and his step-father was a notorious horse- 
thief, it is not surprising that he became what he is— a thief. He is 
now out hiding, a fugitive from justice. 

Mary King, soon after coming home, was employed as employes' 
cook in the Chilocco School, near Kansas. She has since been mar- 
ried, and is now doing very well. 

Hattie Miles has married very well, and she and her husband kept 
a boarding house at this Agency for some time. Mr. King, her hus- 
band, is now Capt. of Agency Police, living in a good house, and 
doing very well. 

Nellie Keokuk, I understand, has gone to some school in the 
States. 

Every one of these students wear citizen's dress. 

There are about 12 students here from other schools who are 
doing fairly, considering their limited advantages of education they 
have had-6 girls and 6 boys. Of these who are doing very well in- 
deed. 1 : fairly well, 8 ; not ambitious and indifferent, 2. 



49 



Now as request is also made for what I have done since leaving 
school, I will report briefly. As soon as I came home, I applied for 
work, but the agent told me there was no work. I then went over to 
the Missionary and applied for work. He hired me as interpreter for 
two or three months, when, through his influence, I obtained position 
as teacher in a day school among the Pottawatomies, where I taught 
one term of 8 months. In the summer of 1883 I was transferred to 
the Shawnees' boarding school of this place, where I taught from year 
to year until the time of my removal last fall. Since then I 
have been working about home first at one thing and then another. My 
savings have enabled me to own a little house of two rooms, beside out- 
buildings, a team of ponies, a wagon and a buggy, and about 45 head 
of cattle. 

There are a great many obstacles in the way of returned Indian 
students which no one can enumerate. In the first place the returned 
student has still his natural propensities which were only made dor- 
mant, as it were, for the time being that he was surrounded by the 
comforts of civilization in a school. As soon as he is brought in con- 
tact with his people these forces are alive, being aroused by arguments 
of his people and other ways, and are at work in direct opposition to 
the principles he just learned in school, and, unless the student has 
something to do to direct his thoughts, or is uncommonly decided in 
his convictions (but 3 years are hardly long enough for that) or re- 
ceives sympathy or encouragement, no one can fail to see which of 
these two forces will come out a conqueror. Work is the great remedy 
in this case, as I found out, and perhaps the only deliverance the stu- 
dents have, and as students in general, especially those of Hcmpton 
and Carlisle are willing to work. But here we come to the worst feature 
of the case. There is not enough work for them at the Agency or at 
home. It is true some have a chance to work at their parent's farm, 
but this is nothing like working one's own farm. They have been 
taught to realize that individual ownership of anything is the best. 



50 



In their homes everything almost is in common. There is no in- 
centive. Some one may ask, why don't the)^ go to work then, open 
out their own farms, and build fences, &c. ? Remember, they must 
have something to eat and to wear while they are splitting the rails 
and "turning the sod," and remember also their country and even 
the men surrounding them are called wild. In short they are sur- 
rounded with nothing like anything in the States. Even a white man who 
is bred in industry, with all his ingenuity requires capital in one form 
or another to begin with, and why not the Indian who is willing to work 
for that capital and only wants a chance. The white man alone can 
give that help. 

No one can estimate the amount of difficulties these returned 
students meet with, until he has seen, felt and knows it. The Con- 
gressional visitors and others have never visited places where the 
obstinate battles were fought, and consequently never saw the heroes 
of these battles. They never even come this far, I know. Its only a 
few places accessible by rail road they have visited, and then only 
stayed a few hours at one place ; not long enough to get at the true 
state of things. Therefore their observations cannot be sustained by 
facts. They ought to visit every Agency, but they don-'t even do this. 

There ought to be no report made upon the subject of what good 
or no good the Eastern schools have done until every part of the 
Indian country is visited by an impartial committee, and every fact is 
weighed ; and when this is done, in my opinion, there will be found 
an abundant testimony to the good work these schools are accomp- 
lishing. All agree that the Indian must be educated in order to become 
an intelligent citizen. If the Eastern schools are closed against him, 
what other schools can take their places ? The Reservation schools 
have failed in part, if not wholly, to accomplish the same results, and 
the Gov't Industrial schools cannot do it. They are good as far as 
they go, but they cannot give the same thorough Christian learning 
that students receive in these Eastern schools, which is essential to good 



51 



■citizenship, and the only strong deliverance the Indian has from his 
present condition. 

The Indian is to become citizen of the United States. He ought 
to have all the advantages to prepare himself, and there is no 
time when he needs more of such school as Hampton and Carlisle as 
now during his transition ; and the returned student has better pros- 
pects of holding out in his new life since the tribal relation with all 
its evils are taken away, and he can secure his own individual farm, 
and everything that he raises is his. 

With best wishes for Hampton's work, I am, respectfully, 

T. W. Alford. 



A LETTER FROM MARGUERITE LA FLESCHE. 
An Indian Graduate of Hampton, with a Report on the Hampton 
Students in Omaha. 

Omaha Agency, Nebraska, Mar eh, 3, 1888. 

I have tried to see all the students and talk with them. I am 
satisfied with what they have told me. They are all doing well, 
except Milton Levering, and he is away from home. He is off with a 
show, and his excuse is that he cannot make money any other way. 
He promised to do as well as he could notwithstanding. I get so 
hungry to hear from Hampton, but I have so much writing to do for 
others that I have to let a great deal of my own writing go. I hope 
the report will be of use to you. Please remember me kindly to all 
my friends. I am very contented in my work, and I have to thank 
Hampton for making my work easy to what it otherwise would have 
been. 

Yours, sincerely, 

Marguerite La Flesche. 



52 



STUDENTS RETURNED TO OMAHA AGENCY. 

Samuel Baxter is doing well. He is married to a Carlisle girl 
He has a team and wagon, and is doing work on his farm. He .tries 
to keep up what he has learned. Goes to night school whenever he can. 

Noah and Lucy La Flesche, Philip and Minnie Stabler, are doing 
excellently. They are living on their farms near the town of Ban- 
croft, and the young men are on an equal footing with the white 
men they have dealings with. Their influence and examples are 
doing a great deal, especially among the young men. They are often 
referred to, and too much cannot be said about the help they are to 
the people. 

The two women keep their houses as neat and clean as any one 
would wish. Both families are of good standing among the white 
people, and they have been a help to the Indians in general, by doing 
away with the prejudices of the whites against the Indians. 

David Wells is doing very well. He has married into a nice 
family. He has seven horses, and has done well on his farm. He is 
always neat in his appearance, and goes to night school when he can. 
He told me he did not want to lose the little he had gained in school. 

Henry Stabler did well while at home, doing the work of. a man. 
He is now at school in Genoa. Xeb. From all accounts he is doing well 
there also. 

Irish Learning did well while he lived. He took special pride in 
telling where he had been, and said if he lived he would go back to 
Hampton. 

Stella Learning is at home. She is doing the best she can. She 
uses what she learned while away as far as she can. The family is 
very poor, and it is hard for her to do as she likes. She has not gone 
back to Indian ways. 

Mrs. Scott is working in a family to support herself. She says she 
longs for Hampton Sundays. She says her life at Hampton gave her 
an idea of a new life. 



53 



George Parker is doing very well. He speaks good English. He 
is working for my father, and has a pony. He says he is going to 
work until he has a team, then he will go to work on his land. He 
has no taste for Indian life, and I often hear him telling the other 
boys an education is the best thing they can have. He wishes he 
could have staid at school. 

Charles Montcravie is working for his brother on their mother's 
farm. He has done well since he came home. 

Albert Morgan is not well. He is a great help, I hear, for inter- 
preting for his friends. 

Garry Myers has been to Genoa to school, and has done quite 
well. 

Nettie Fremont is at the Omaha Mission. Her father is very 
anxious to have her go back to Hampton, and she is ready to go back 
any time. Her health has improved very much. She has done well 
in school this winter. 

Susan Burt (Lovejoy) has done excellently well. She is married 
to a Carlisle boy, and they have both done well. 

Noah has just finished their new house, and they expect to mo\ e 
into it and work their farm this spring. Susan was laundress at the 
Omaha Mission until she married, and she had done so well that the 
Superintendent wanted her to stay and go on with her work. She 
dresses neatly and keeps up her English well. Her influence is very 
good. 

Milton Levering has not done well. For a while he returned to 
Indian ways, but had the grace to be ashamed of himself when he met 
any of the students. He is off with a show, but said he wished he had 
done better, just before he left. 

Nancy Levering is one the Hampton school can be proud of, for 
she lias done exceedingly well. She had the most to contend against 
but she has stood bravely through it all. She is working at the 
{ )maha Mission School and gives satisfaction. She has kept up her 



54 



English. She hopes she may some time go back to Hampton. 

Marguerite La Flesche. I am teaching at the Agency School. 
My Hampton schooling has been of the greatest value to me. So far 
as I know my teaching has given satisfaction. The Indians have told 
me that they would like all their teachers from the Eastern schools. 

Mary Tindal, from Lincoln Institute, Philadelphia, is assistant 
teacher at the Omaha Mission. She is doing well, and her teaching 
has given satisfaction. 

Annie Fuller is not here, but the last I heard she was well, and 
still thought ''Winona Lodge" a fairy home. 

There is very little employment for returned students outside 
their, own homes, yet, I think, soon there will be, after things are a 
little more settled. 

Those who have been off to school understand better the new life 
which opens before them, for their outing has given them broader 
ideas of civilization and what they must expect to do if they are to 
live like the "white man." If they had learned nothing else than that 
they must go ahead and do what they can for themselves, it is a great 
thing for them. 

They have much to work against, because while they have gone 
forward, those at home have remained the same, or nearly so. If they 
do nothing else they are sure of one thing ; in most of their homes* 
the parents make an effort to better the way of living for their sakes, 
wishing to have "things to be more as the boy or girl has been used 
to while they were away. After the students return, there is no 
inducement for them to go forward, no one, except their own families, 
to encourage them; but I am beginning to think it is just as well, for 
many of them have gone on and stood true and showed their strength 
when, if they had something else to depend on, they might not have 
exerted themselves so much. The influence of the students has, on 
the whole, been very good, for the people now believe thoroughly in 
Eastern education, and want more of their children to go to school. 



55 

The prospect for my people, on the whole, is very encouraging, and 
the people are more than ever anxious to go forward. The mingling 
more with the whites has had a marked effect on many of them. The 
students are decidedly better for their Eastern schooling. As a 
rule, none of them seem to have any inclination to return to the old 
life, and that has had a great deal of effect on the Indians. They 
realize that the life of the past is no more, and that if their children 
are to live the new life they must be taken away entirely, for a time 
at least, from the influences of reservation life. 

I am in a position to see all these things, and I have been pleas- 
antly surprised at the amount accomplished, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, by the returned Hampton and Carlisle students. Most of 
those who attend the night school here are returned students. God 
bless both those schools, for only through them and by them can the 
" Indian problem" be solved. It has been said the "hoe' 'will solve the 
Indian question, but the Indian has to be taught first how to use it, 
and it is done only at Hampton and Carlisle. I cannot speak of what 
dear Hampton has done for me, for it has made me what I am, and I 
would not take anything in the world in exchange for my Hampton 
training, and the elevation of my people will be due in a great measure 
to the elevation of these schools. 

Marguerite La Flesche. 



A LETTER FROM SUSAN LA FLESCHE, 

An Indian graduate of Hampton, now studying in the Woman's Medi- 
cal College of Pennsylvania. 

Philadelphia, Pa., December, 19, 1887. 

My Dear Friend, Mr. Frissell— 

Over a month ago I received the annual graduates' 
letter from Miss Cleveland. I was very much pleased to receive it, 
and will gladly answer it and give an account of myself, for I feel as 
if I could never do enough for my Alma Mater, for all the good I 



56 

have received from her. It is next to hearing from my own dear 
Western home, to hear from Hampton. It is a characteristic trait, 
too, of the Indians to love their homes. I am sure I love my home 
and I can truly say that Hampton Institute has been to me a second 
home. The two short years I spent within the walls of the school 
were full of happiness. My life has been made much broader, and 
richer, and fuller every way, and those two years, so full of strength 
and helpfulness to me then, have proved so now, and will still be of 
help to me in my future medical work among my people. Although 
it is about a year and a half since I graduated from Hampton, I miss it 
yet-not only those happy seekers after knowledge, like myself, 
but the prayer meetings, the church, all the different forms of good 
work in which the students are engaged ; -Lend a Hand," temperance, 
social and missionary work, and last, but not least, the noble corps of 
teachers, who do so much to cheer, comfort, and help us in our work. 

The thought that I am one of Hampton's graduates is an incentive 
to my work in my medical studies here. I am so very much interested 
in my studies ; last year I did not think that I could be anv more 
interested, but I am, and probably because I can understand better. 
How many married couples have you now in the cottages ? I am 
deeply interested in them, for when I was at home I saw what a good 
work those cottages were doing. I think that already the work of 
civilization has been much aided, as those homes are a practical illus- 
tration which the Indians cannot but take to themselves, especially 
the non-progresszves. It has acted as a stimulus, and awakened many 
to the fact that it is time that they "go and do likewise." and so I 
think. the little wave that started will be productive of much good to 
my people. When you add to this the individual .influence of Hamp- 
ton's many "sons and daughters," graduates and ex-students, who are 
now in the field, you can only faintly realize what a broad, noble work 
our Alma Mater is doing. As we were walking in the streets of this 
city only the other day, John Tiaokasin said, I have seen many 



57 



schools, but Hampton is the best," and I agreed with him entirely. I 
can never express my gratitude to General Armstrong for his Hampton 
school, but I can thank the Lord that His Almighty Hand led me 
there three short years ago, and I shall never regret that I went there. 
I was so glad to read Walter Battice's letter to the " Talks and 
Thoughts," in which he said he took part in some of the prayer meet- 
ings. I am glad to say I do what little I can, and am the Corresponding 
Secretary of the Y. W. C. A. of the Women's Medical College. Mar- 
guerite said she missed Hampton so much on Sundays, and I advised 
her to start up a Hampton Sunday there, a day alwa)^ so full of cheer 
and brightness for everybody, and she wrote back that she did so 
want to fill her little corner full of light, but it seemed she caught a 
gleam of light only now and then. It would be a greal deal if she 
only reflect those little gleams. Charles Picotte seems to be 
" holding the fort" at Yankton. He said the head teacher at St. 
Paul's School was away almost a week, and he had to take the whole 
school, besides his other numerous duties. He has over thirty boys 
himself. I think David W r ells has turned out so nicely, and I was 
pleased and proud over George Miller and his speech. I hope the 
new year will be full of sunshine for our Hampton and its noble 
w r orkers, and that seeming clouds will roll away. May God be with 
you all. 

Your Indian Friend, 

Susan La Flesche. 

a letter from annie dawson, of the arickaree tribe, in 
dakota, who graduated in 1 886. 

State Normal School, Framingham, Mass., Feb. 2j, iSSS, 
Dear General Armstrong: 

I heard that there has been a considerable and unfavorable talk 
concerning the Negroes and their influence over the Indians at Hamp- 



58 

ton. As I feel greatly interested, and also thankful, for what Hampton 
has done and is doing for my race and me, I feel it my duty to say 
something in regard to that matter. 

At the beginning I want to say that the Indians do not come in 
contact with the Negroes as most people suppose, as they live in differ- 
ent buildings, have different dining-rooms and class-rooms, except the 
few T who are in the Normal Classes. 

Since my arrival at Hampton in the fall of 1879, till my departure 
from there last August, I found the Negroes friendly, and of great help 
to the Indians in many good ways, instead of a hindrance to us by our 
contact with them. 

In that they were earnest, faithful, and worked hard for their edu- 
cation, they greatly induced me to appreciate my opportunities. Also 
their example of courtesy in the pleasant social gatherings which the 
Indians once in a while spend with the Negroes, I think, has an elevating 
effect on the Indians, as the Indian young men learn from the Negro 
young men the civilized way of treating the women with respect. And 
one of our most helpful teachers and friends we ever had was Miss 
Lovey Mayo, a colored young lady, who was for some*years employed 
in the Indian Department, and she received as much respect and love 
from the Indian girls as any white teacher we have, and we were all 
very sorry when she went away. 

And I am glad my people have the chance to come in contact 
with the kind, earnest, hard-working set of people, for I know from 
my own experience there are many things which they can learn from 
the Negroes, not from their encouraging words only, but from the exam- 
ples also which are set before them. 

With many thanks for all you have done and are doing for my 
race, one of your pupils, Annie R. Dawson. 



59 



FROM A HAMPTON INDIAN GIRL IN TRAINING FOR A NURSE. 

New Haven, Conn., Jan. 8, 1888. 

My Dear Miss R — 

I want to write and thank you for the pretty little handkerchief 
you sent me. I watched the old year out all alone this year, and I 
thought of dear "Winona" when I heard the bells. 

I came out to the Pavilion that very night with an older nurse, to 
take care of two patients who have the typhoid fever ; they are very 
sick and have to have a good deal of care. 

We take turn in staying on duty. I go to bed at 9 o'clock and 
then get up at 2, and take care of them the rest of the night, and some 
nights I never sit down at all, only long enough to write out the night 
report for the Dr. This morning I was very much frightened; one of 
the patient's temperature which is all the way from ioo° to 104.9 0 fell 
to 97. 8°, and I hurried and put three hot water bottles in the bed and 
gave a good rubbing. It was about 5 o'clock A. M., and about 7 it was 
100.3 0 . I was glad. I have been to 8.operations ; the first one we 
had there were a good many new nurses present, and some of them 
became quite sick, and they asked me if I was, and I told them 
Indians did not mind such things, but before they got through giving- 
the ether, I almost had to leave ; but in a little while it was all over, 
and I did not mind any of them since the first. 

We have to stay two months in the surgical ward, and then go to 
the medical. I finished in the former and went to the latter when I 
was taken out here with these fevers. 

I like nursing very much, but some of it is pretty hard work. 
I am very thankful that the Lord has opened the way for me here 
in this place, for there is a great deal to be done among the sick 
people, and some dying every week, who do not have Him for their 
friend and helper. 

I always feel happy when I feel that I have made some one more- 
comfortable during the day, and they are so thankful for what we do 
for them who are sick. 



60 



Dear Miss R., — you will excuse this writing, as I have had to 
stop writing so many times to tend my patient. Please give my love 
to Mrs. S.— and to all the girls in Winona. I think of them all at 
Hampton, and am proud when people ask me. where I went to school. 

God bless you for the good example you have and are teaching to 
Indian girls. I shall be glad to hear from you if you have time. 

With love, your Indian girl, 

J. E. B. 



AN EXTRACT. 

John Downing, referred to above in T. W. Alford's letter, agrad- 
uate of '82, married in '85, wrote last year from Anadarko, Indian Ter„ 

"I have a farm of forty acres— twenty under cultivation. I have 
a wagon, buggy and farming implements ; also fourteen head of ponies 
and over a hundred head of cattle and plenty of hogs * * My 
education comes handy when it comes to measuring land, haystacks, 
cord wood and corn in the crib. I have made $60. a month since I 
left school — partly in stock. In one or two years I hope to be able to 
build a good home. My little son, James Hugh Downing is a very 
bright little boy, and his present features promise that he will grow up 
to be a useful man and a blessing to his parents." 

Many other encouraging extracts might be added from letters of 
Indian students who have left Hampton, published from month to 
month in the " Southern Workman and Hampton School Record. " 



OUTSIDE TESTIMONY. 



A LETTER FROM MISS ALICE C. FLETCHER. 



Winnebago Agency, Neb., Feb. 8, 188S. 

My Dear Miss Ludlow: 

Your letter dropped like a bomb into my icy seclusion, and I 
hasten to answer the rally-cry. 

Two points have always impressed me in the criticisms I have 
heard upon returned students of Indian training schools off the reser- 
vation, and particularly those situated in the East. 

First : The notion that youths, after three or five years' training, 
should be able to at once revolutionize their native customs, irre- 
spective of environment, local prejudice and poverty of resources. 

Second : That the individual character of each pupil is not taken 
into account, but every boy and girl is supposed to be equally 
capable of absorbing new ideas, acquiring a new language, and devel- 
oping a mental power equal to creating new conditions, and enabling 
him or her to become a leader while still almost a child in years. 

Such hard lines are never laid upon our own children. Boys and 
girls are not expected in a few years to master a foreign language and 
studies unfamiliar to their parents, and upon this basis revolutionize 
the accustomed methods of living and speaking, and become success- 
ful workmen and farmers. Yet this is what is demanded of Indian 
boys and girls by those who are called on to report upon returned 
students, and by those who await the stories of the travelers or ob- 
servers upon these young folk. 

Looking about me among the Omaha and Winnebago Indians, 
this is what I see to-day. It is hardly six years since the first children 



from these tribes were taken to Eastern schools, and of those who 
w r ent forth, a part have been back from one to three 3'ears. Of these 
the record has been such as to demonstrate the advantage which 
their few years of dwelling in the dense atmosphere of civilization at 
the East has been to these young persons. 

Even- case is, however, modified by the individuality of the stu- 
dent. Some of these persons are of a nature which does not yield 
readily to wise counsel. Nothing but the constant presence of a 
teacher, and public opinion could hold them to steady habits of in- 
dustry, while only a " change of heart " could enable them to love 
good better than self-indulgence. These characters are, however, 
individual, and not attributable to their schooling, although I have 
sometimes suspected that their Eastern training has modified even 
their undesirable traits, as in many respects these persons are more 
endurable than similar youths who have never been away from the 
reservations. Excepting these unfortunate!}- constituted persons, and 
happily they are few in number, the returned students cannot fail to 
win the commendation and sympathy of every fair minded and intelli- 
gent observer. By intelligent I mean one who knows something of 
the struggles in the Indian's life as he encounters them and knows 
them, and not as these appear to the white man. 

You are familiar with the story of those returned Hampton stu- 
dents who had received a few years of training in school and cottage 
life, Philip and Minnie ■ Stabler, Xoah and Lucy La Flesche. Two 
years ago their lands were unbroken prairie. To-day they have each 
nearly fifty acres under cultivation, and expect to break more this 
spring. Their houses, built by themselves, from funds loaned by the 
Woman's Xat. Indian Ass'n, are neat and well kept. Their out-build- 
ings of sod are tidy, their stock well cared for, and they are daily 
learning how to prosper. Their progress is almost phenomenal. 
Something is unquestionably due to the location of their allotments, 
being almost in the midst of white settlers, and therefore environed 



63 



by civilization , but their power to adapt themselves to their sur- 
roundings is in turn clue to their daily experience during their few- 
years of living in the East, where they became a part of an enlightened 
community. Their success contrasts strongly with other Omahas who 
have for years lived as near white settlers, but who have never known 
what it was to become a part of a well ordered society, and who are 
consequently at a loss how to adopt what they see into their own 
daily life. This remark bears even more strongly upon the Indian 
women than upon the Indian men. 

Noah Lovejoy and his wife Susan are another bright example. 
Noah is a Carlisle boy and Susan a Hampton girl. They returned 
last summer, and were married this winter. Noah is building a house 
by the same kind assistance that helped the other young couples, and 
expects to break twenty acres of land this spring. Both these young 
people have been at work ever since their return, and are carrying out 
their plans, which will in a few years lead them into prosperity. 

Other returned students are struggling with the vast inertia of 
reservation life ; some going out into the settlements seeking work ; 
all of them holding on as well as they can to that which they learned 
both consciously and unconsciously in their short stay in the East- 
Their enterprise is a strange sight to their Indian friends, and with 
hardly an exception all the family lean upon the slender reed of these 
children's small experience in the world of work and ideas. They 
are trusted beyond their years as being able "to look into the future," 
as the Indian says in his simple way. To one looking on, it seems 
pathetic to watch these children trying to cut a way through the 
dense thicket of reservation life and habits, knowing so little whither 
the opening should lead. 

Girls, too, come to my mind, living in little one-room cabins, or 
the rude wigwam of mats, striving to keep themselves neat, pinning 
up on the wall the bright card of a past Christmas, or arranging in a 
corner, like a little shrine, the souvenirs of their brief school days, and 



64 



covering the treasures over to keep them free from soil. These girls, 
with so close and low-bound an horizon, urge the education of their 
younger brothers and sisters, and do their best to make the niggardly 
circumstances of their homes a little less forlorn ; writing letters for 
the Indians in imperfect but well meant English. These girls surely 
deserve praise and sympathy. These are doing better, accomplishing 
more in the slow upbuilding of the people than those girls who have 
never been away from the narrow life of trie reservation. 

There are others who are teachers. Marguerite La Flesche, a 
Hampton graduate, is doing admirably at the Government school 
among the teachers. Her labors reach far beyond the school room 
she is a moral stay to men and women as well as girls and boys. She 
is well aware that her powers were developed and trained in Eastern 
schools. 

Marv Tyndali, of Carlisle, and later of Lincoln Institute. Phila- 
delphia, is teaching at the Omaha mission. Her work is creditable 
to her mind and heart, and the little girls cling about the big sister 
who knows so much, and who is not afraid of the wide unknown 
world where the white men live. 

Nellie Landrosh, a Winnebago, and student from Carlisle, is the 
assistant teacher at the Government school at the Winnebago agency. 
She, too. is winning her way by faithful work. 

I have no wish to here contrast Eastern and Western schools, 
whether on or off the reservation, simply as schools. There are un- 
doubtedly good educational institutions in the West, but every thing 
being equal, there is one condition incident to Eastern schools that 
will make them for some time to come a real necessity to a portion 
of each Indian tribe; that is, according to the judgment of disinterested 
persons who are forcing the practical work, demanded by the fast 
coming citizenship to the Indian, of lifting him over into the midst of 
civilized living. This condition is the environment of the Eastern 
schools. All of them are located in the midst of a rigidly organized 



65 

society, where avocations are varied, and where landmarks are fixed. 
These peculiarities of Eastern life have been by some older folk 
deemed drawbacks to the "making of one's fortune," and there is talk 
of the cramping effect of Eastern notions. These very "drawbacks," 
however, become educational to the youths, teaching them the value 
of many things they could hardly otherwise learn. It is a well known 
fact that the child absorbs more from its daily surroundings than 
from its stated instructions, and for this reason many things outside 
the curriculum are taught and learned in the East. The advantages 
of Eastern training are recognized by intelligent men and women of 
the West, and these seek to send their children East for a season. 
If this discipline be a benefit to white children with all their inherited 
advantages, how much more is the lesson needed by the untutored 
Indian, in order to instil in him an appreciation of law and order, and 
habits of industry and thrift. The stir, restless experimenting, and 
energy of the West, which are sowing so rich a harvest for civilization 
and national prosperity, are not the helps to the Indian that the 
lessons are, which are learned by him in the diversified industries of 
the slower and more staid methods of the East. He can there best 
acquire persistence in labor, steadiness of purpose, and accustom 
himself to the "ways of the white man." 

There are other favorable considerations which could be men. 
tioned as belonging to the Eastern environment, but all the talking 
of hours is not so good as the statement of facts, and facts go to show 
that while the majority of Indians must always receive their school- 
ing in the West, it is essential to leaven the tribe with young men and 
women who, in the midst of our thickly settled, conservative East, 
have acquired knowledge and habits which fit them later in life to 



f>6 



venture forward, and thus lead their people out of the thralls of igno- 
rance into the liberty of knowledge. These facts, too, are in accordance 
with history, which shows us that the uplifting of peoples, as well as 
individuals, has been brought about by similar means. 

Very truly yours, 

Alice C. Fletcher. 

Letters from the Rt. Rev. W. H. Hare, D. D., 

MISSIONARY BISHOP OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IX 
SOUTHERN DAKOTA. 
The first of these letters was published by the Indian Rights Asso- 
ciation in 1 886, in the pamphlet " Are the Eastern Industrial Training 
Schools a Failure f" The second is nam added by Bishop Hare for pub- 
lication here. 

Philadelphia, March 19. 1886. 

To Herbert Welsh, Esq.. 

Cor. Secy Indian Rights Association. 

My Dear Mr. Welsh ; — I am amazed at the statement, which you 
say is gaining currency, that " Indian students from schools at the East, 
relapse almost without exception into barbarism." 

Twelve years of my life have been spent as a Missionary Bishop in 
work among Indians, whose children have been largely represented in 
these schools. The missions and schools in which I am especially in- 
terested, are all of them located right among the Indians, and my pre- 
possessions, therefore, are altogether enlisted in behalf of schools situ- 
ated on Indian Reservations; and my judgment is that most of the edu- 
cational work for Indians should be done there. 

But I cannot shut my eyes to the incalculable service which well 
conducted eastern boarding schools have done the Indians, and I am 
rilled with alarm when I hear it suggested that their work should be 
either discontinued or crippled. 

(a) These schools serve as h gh standards by which Reservation 



67 



schools are tested, and they then correct the common tendency to 
apologize for poor school work on Reservations with the thought ; "Oh 
this is about the best that can be done with Indians." 

(b) They are models, to which schools less advantageously placed 
are working up. (c) They have placed a practical argument in favor 
of Indian education before which scepticism has fled and indifference 
been warmed to zeal, (d) And they have sent back to the Indian 
country a large number of young people who have been of great serv- 
ice, intellectually, morally and practically, to their people. 

I am aware that much testimony can be produced on the other 
side. The reasons are not hard to discover. Some students do turn 
out badly, and such cases make deep impressions. 

Indian youth, like white young people, when they come back to 
their homes from school or college, are apt to have an exaggerated 
sense of their own importance and want to have their own way. They 
have ideas of their own, and are harder to manage than ignorant In- 
dians: a disagreeable thing to incompetent guides. They know too 
much to be easily cheated, and they have have too much independence 
to submit to being treated like dogs. To some this is inconvenient. 

In a word, these students are in their green-apple stage. People 
who bite them of course make faces. But let them alone or give them 
the sunshine of a kind and considerate friendship, and they will become 
ripe and mellow. 

Yours sincerely, W. H. HARE. 



Washington, D. C, Feb. 16, 1888. 
Dear General Armstrong: — I have just read the letter which 
I addressed to Mr. Herbert Welsh in March, 1886, on the subject 
of Indian schools at the East, and, learning that doubts as to their 
value are entertained in some quarters, I should like to reiterate what 
I then wrote. I saw from the first that schools at the East like Hamp- 



ton Institute,would be able to accomplish in certain lines what schools 
on the Reservation, with their limited resources and distance from civ- 



ilization, could j 
sending to Ham 
promising pupil 
education there. 

policy has been 
Institu 
gratitu 



not mi 



Pennsylvania. 



From Mr 



I determined to adopt the policy of 
:re at the East, the more advanced and 
schools, that the}- might finish their 

the benefits likely to result from this 
vent, and my yearly visit to Hampton 
*e our students than it is to show my 

nate upon health is concerned, I have 
t Hampton from what it is near the 

rery truly, W. H. HARE, 

Missionary Bishop. 



Herbert Welsh. 

RY INDIAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION. 



1 desire to make the lollowmg statement in relation to the points 
at issue. As Secretary of the Indian Rights Association, an office to 
which no salary- or emolument of any kind is attached, I have paid, 
during the past four years, three visits to the great Sioux reservation 
of Dakota, and one visit to the Navajo reservation of Arizona and 
New Mexico. During this period I have frequently seen, under cir- 
cumstances favorable to an investigation of their case, many returned 
Indian students, who had been educated at Hampton, Carlisle and 
other places in the East. I never remember among these any who 
have relapsed to barbarism, and, of the great majority, I can confident- 
ly assert they are doing well. Some of these are ministers in the 
Episcopal Church ; full-blooded Indians who were not pupils of Hamp- 
ton, Carlisle or the Lincoln Institution, but who received their educa- 
tion at other places in the East before these institutions had begun 
their work. These men have for years carried on faithful work among 
their own people ; receiving no suppo7 1 from Government, they have 
maintained a high standard of morality and Christian living, although 
surrounded by heathen Indians." 



Opinions of Leading Citizens of Hampton, 

AS TO THE SCHOOL AND THE CONTACT OF RACES. 



From Rev. J. J. Gravatt, Rector of old St. John's Church, 
Where the first baptism of an Indian child occurred in this country. 

I came to Hampton in 1876, and since that time have had charge 
of St. John's Church. In 1878 the Indians were placed at Hampton 
Institute, and I was asked to take part in the religious work, as many 
of them came from Episcopal Agencies. In addition to this connec- 
tion with the school, I have for five years last past spent the summer 
on the school grounds as Chaplain for the whole school. 

As to the contact between the Indian and colored students in the 
school, I have known no case ef moral injury to either party. I 
brought from the West some Indian boys who had been in a white 
school in Illinois, and who, from contact with bright, bad white stu- 
dents, had become very much demoralized, and the same boys have 
toned up and improved in every respect here. The Indian is more 
ready to follow the white than the colored man in vice. Industrially, the 
contact with the colored race has been of great value to the Indian. 
The Negro knows how to work ; the Indian needs to learn. Industrial 
schools for whites have not been a marked success. 

The Indian, with his innate feelings crushed by the white man, 
unable to compete with him, finds his ambition stirred, hope awak 
ened and energies aroused when brought in connection with a people 
in lower condition. Vice seems less attractive, as a part and cause 
of their weakness. 

As to the condition of the population surrounding the school, of 
which the Negroes form quite a large part, I understand from law- 
yers and others that this community will compare most favorably with 
any of like size. There is little crime ; less than in mining districts 



70 



with white people. The colored people give little trouble, and appear 
better than in any other part of Virginia, so far as I know. Hampton 
Institute is a balance wheel, and has been exerting a quiet but powerful 
influence for good. 

Before incorporation the town was large and unwieldy, but is 
improving with law and order. The growth, in all respects, during the 
past ten years, has been marked. I have known of one occasion when 
two colored men — acting as middle-men — furnished three Indian boys 
with liquor. With this exception, I have learned of no injury to the 
Indian from the Negroes in the community. His chief contact is not 
with the Negro population, but, through the church and church-work, 
with the best element of white people. Understand me not to say this 
isan ideal community; much needsto be done. It would not be well to 
put the Indian in an ideal place, could such be found ; he must learn 
with his white brother to be in the world but not of it. 

J. J. Gravatt, 
Rector St. Johns Church, Hampton, 



FROM A LEADING HAMPTON MERCHANT. 

I fully concur with Mr. Gravatt's statement as to the contact with 
the population outside the school grounds. The Negroes greatly 
outnumber the whites, and although our police officers are exception- 
ally zealous in making arrests for even petty offences, still our county 
jail records show but twelve commitments of residents of the town 
and county in the three months ending with February 29, 1888. Of 
these, five were for drunkenness, three for petty larceny, two for 
assault, one for swearing on the streets, and but one for a felony. This, 
official record will compare very favorably with a like volume of popu- 
lation in any county of any State. 

Jacob Heffelfinger. 

Interviewed in November last as to the progress and condition 
of Hampton, Mr. Heffelfinger said : 



71 



" Hampton is not under a boom, but what is much better, is in a 
state of rapid and healthy progress. Not less than one hundred and 
twenty-five substantial buildings have been erected within the last 
live years, among them a number of brick blocks, each containing 
from two to three stores. This count does not include the many 
small but comfortable dwellings put up by the colored people, which 
would increase the number at least threefold." 



Mr. Jas. McMenamin, another prominent citizen of Hampton 
•one of the most successful business men of the town, with four hun- 
dred colored men on his pay roll, said at the same date, "The 
people in my employ, and the colored people generally in the town 
are improving, living better and more comfortably, taking less interest 
in politics and more in their homes. There is abundant work, espe- 
cially in the oyster season, when a colored laborer is paid twenty cents 
a bushel by the owners of oyster beds for taking up oysters, and can 
have constant work and make $3 a day if he will keep at it." 

Mr. McMenamin, who is a member of the town council, also 
stated that " The population of Hampton is about 3000. The number 
of business houses licensed by the corporation is one hundred and 
five. The town clerk estimates that the colored people own about 
one-fourth of the real estate, as valued in the assessments." 



Reports on Indian " Outings." 



FROM NORTHERN FAMILIES; 

( With whom our Indian Students spent last Summer.) 
The general effect and bearing of the students upon the streets 
this summer has been excellent. I have heard but one among them 
criticised, and that was for smoking. I have known no cases of drink- 
ing. If there have been any, they have escaped my knowledge. 

" I never had a better boy, and if he ever comes to Massachusetts 
again, I shall want him." 

" I have had a number of Indians in my family, and I am fully 
satisfied that they pay their way." 

" My boy was a good boy, and tried to do well. He could not work 
as well by himself as the boy last year." 

" I am glad I took her. Some days she did good work, others 
very little. She never refused to do as I told her, and, as a rule, was 
good tempered and cheerful." 

" My girl did well ; as well as we could ask. A good, conscien- 
tious Christian girl. Only once that she disobeyed, and then she felt 
very badly about it, and did all she could to make it right. I shall be 
glad of another next summer if I can arrange to have one." 

" She was a good worker, and a good girl— quick and willing. I 
should have been glad to have her stay with me this winter. She 
never refused to do what I told her, cheerfully and well." 

" My boys came May 27th, and took right hold of business on the 
farm, plowed my corn ground, on which we have raised about 100 



73 



bushels ears of seed corn, and six wagon loads of pumpkins ; planted 
over one acre of potatoes, cut about 35 tons of hay, harvested 63 
shocks of oats, etc. They have done the pitching of hay and grain. 
I have had no other help. They were up in the morning without 
being called, and helped about the milking and other chores, night 
and morning regularly. This much in regard to work. They were 
always cheerful and ready to assist in whatever work I was engaged 
in ; were pleasant to have around ; they didn't smoke tobacco in 
presence of myself or my family, were very neat and particular in per- 
sonal appearance. They won my regard and affection." 



FROM INDIAN STUDENTS. 

I stayed in Monterey with I made hay with a scythe, I 

milked cows, sometimes thirteen or fourteen. I cut corn, I fed the 
horses and worked in carpenter shop. Sometimes Saturday after- 
noon we have play, always sleep at home. Sunday I go to church 
and to Sunday school. 



I stay Tyringham, Mass. But I like it first-rate, the name man is 

Mr. . I stay with him. I take care of two horses and every 

morning I clean up the stable and every evening I go after the cows 
about dark about seven o'clock. I get through milking nine o'clock. 
I stay with Henry Little Eagle one night. I have holiday every 
Saturday afternoon. I go to church every Sunday to Monterey. 



I staid in Westfield, with Mrs. . I am do dishes and set 

the table. I always mop and sweeping and chamber work and help 
washing and ironing and make bread. They gave me a little book 
and a portfolio, every afternoon I have for myself. Twice I staid all 
night with Carrie Half. I go to church and to Sunday school on 
Sundays 



74 



I stayed in New Jersey with Mrs. . I took care of a little 

cow and chickens and I went to the Postoffice and to the stores and I 
worked carpenter work in the house. They gave me a coat, and pants 
arid shoes and two white shirts and twelve collars and one overcoat 
and an umbrella and a hat. I had no holiday, but I did not work 
very hard. Sunday I went to church and heard Dr. Green preach. 

Taking everything into consideration, I enjoyed the summer very 
much. I shall never forget the kind people and the innumerable ideas 
that I have gained this summer. This is what every Indian boy needs. 
He cannot learn everything in school. After a summer's work I am 
much stronger and have more confidence in myself to make a good 
living. I discovered that faithful and continual work is essential to 
success in life. 



Letters and Reports from Returned Students. 

A few extracts from many received in the last yew. 
An Omaha student, who was helped to build a house for his 
family by a loan from the Woman's National Indian Association, 
wrote to our chaplain, from 

Bancroft, Neb. 

Dec. 21, 1887. 

Dear Friend, Mr. Frissell : 

I am write to you a few lines to-day. I was think- 
ing of you so I write to you. You was here last summer and you see 
our crops good, we take our crops good. I take some wheat this 
year. I take 435 bushil and the corn 750 bushil and beans 20 bushil, 
two load of wagon potatoes. I have 17 pigs and a cow. I have them 
this fall, we have not much chickens this year only 70 chickens. I 
like to hear from you and like to hear all my Hampton friends. I 
missed you all my friend ever Sunday. I hope you think of me. I 
am well and all my family well. 

From your friend, 

Philip Stabler. 



75 



Lucy La Fleschf, gives a glimpse of a happy home secured to 
another of our married couples, by the same kind aid. 

" After breakfast, when my rooms are in order, I sit down to sew. I 
have shirts and pillow slips to make and table cloths and napkins to 
hem, I have my own washing and ironing to do, besides I go over 
and help Rosalie wash every other week. I love to help her. I 
helped Susette wash too before she went away. When their washing 
day comes they come over after me. I have strong arms so am willing to 
help them. In the evening Noah and I sit down to read or study. 

* * * In our bed room we have a very nice bedstead, bureau, 
and two chairs, but they are the only chairs in the house, so that we 
have to carry them in the kitchen when we go there. In the sitting 
room a nice book shelf, which Noah made, and a few pictures which 
we brought from Hampton. In our kitchen we have a good cooking 
stove, a nice table, a small table to keep the dishes on as we 
havn't any cupboard, and a barrel to keep our flour in, that is all. 

* * * This has been a hard winter for us in the way of get- 
ting wood, and we did not have much money to buy food with, but 
the winter is almost over and we are getting ready to go to work and 
raise plenty." 

Through the kindness of some Washington ladies Lucy's house 
is now better supplied with furniture, and Noah has almost forty 
acres of wheat planted, and is getting his ground ready for corn and 
vegetables. 



Jennie No Ears Primeau, who with her husband has a suc- 
cessful day school and pleasant home, 40 miles from Standing Rock 
Agency, wrote at a time when they were "snowed in." 

" I cannot find language to express my thanks for the very nice 
articles the Lend a Hand Club sent me. It aided me very much to 
-reward scholars and I had the pleasure of telling them that they were 
sent from a long distance by friends and they appreciated the presents 
very much. Give them my thanks for all." 



" No more Zero." Here is another letter that speaks for itself 
and for the staying influence of Eastern education: 



76 



Sacaton Agency, Arizona, 

Jan. 25, 1888. 

My dear Miss Folsom : 

I was interested to write you and tell you that I am very 
well, and have good time, and I hope you are the same. No sickness, 
but full of joy. I wish I was at Hampton. What you think about I 
want to go back to Hampton again, and to learn more about white 
man's way. I am always think of friends at Hampton, and that make 
me think of old home Hampton, where I left many friends of mine 
which was very good to me. I want you to send me some of the pict- 
ures of the buildings at Hampton, and I would also send for a sute 
(suit) at Hampton by and by, and I am going to tell you that Melissa 
Inez is gone to Tucson to school, with four girls and five boys, and to 
day there are some more gone, six girls and three boys now. Harry 
is very well. Now I am here and have no work, but a cow-boy, herd- 
ing cattle ; here no more shoe maker, no farmer, but a cow-boy, and 
I liked, but some time I don't liked, there is no fun in it, but is only 
fun is lossaing (lassoing.) Sing hymns so for me when you leave 
your prayer meeting again, No. 23. I am so glad that our father in 
heaven. I think of your prayer meeting and remember all the sweet 
songs you sing, and sound very good when you sing it, and it get into 
my head and get out of it. Give my best wishes to all I know. I 
think this is all ; good by, good by to all. 

I am your friend, A 

Charlie Matthews. 
One of the old Hampton Normal and Arizona Ty. boys. Zero no 
more for me. I hope to hear from you soon, telling about Hampton. 



A letter from jail, Not all of our returned students have 
done well. Only one has ever been charged with criminal offences. 
But when we receive a letter such as this from that one — imprisoned 
for stealing whiskey and selling it to Indians — we cannot but feel, as 
Mr. Riggs and other observant workers have said, "While some have 
' gone back' they are not as they were before and never can be." 

United States Penitentiary, 

Nov. 18, 1887. 

"Miss , 

I have been wanting to write to you for a long time, but 
ever since I did this thing that to put me where I am to-day has been 



77 



so Strong on my mind all that I could not write to you. I have felt 
and I feel that I have no more friends in the East, ever since I was 
put in here. Why? because, after all they have done to educate me, 
and now I am in a place where I have to stay fourteen long months, 
and have men stand over me with arms. They have been some white 
ladies, who came here to see the place, but I was not able to look up 
in their faces. I had to look down, because I was ashamed of myself. 
And I thought of the lady who paid my scholarship for over three 
years. I wrote to her and told her that I was going to live a Christian 
Life, when I come home in Dakota. And now I am in Dakota, but I 
am not living the life that I said I was going to live, or I am not help- 
ing the Indians. ******* 
I am alone and lost, but I hope I shall find my way out soon. I 
have sinned against everything and every body, but I shall take up my 
old mind and walk in the narrow path again for the rest of my life." 



Report from the Agent of the Pi mas. 

U. S. Indian Agent Howard reports upon the Hampton returned 
students at his agency, the Pima and Papago, in Arizona, as follows : 

" Antonito " Azul is a fair representative of what the Indian citizen 
should be, intelligent, sober, and industrious, having an intelligent ap- 
preciation of the value of property honestly acquired, so hard to create 
in the Indians. As one of the results of his industry, he occupies an 
adobe house, comfortably furnished, and uses his own wagon and buggy, 
Last year he was given the contract for furnishing beef for this school, 
and the service was very satisfactory. This year he will supply the beef, 
and barley and wheat necessary to supply this agency. 

I am informed that when he came to Hampton he left two wives, 
and that on his return one was divorced, but provided for. This ex- 
ample of the chief's son aided materially in extirpating polygamy from 
this reserve, and it is gratifying to state that there is not now on either 
of the reservations under this agency a single case of plurality of wives. 

Harry Azul, his son, has done well, having just completed a dwell- 
ing house, which will be comfortably furnished. He owns some cattle, 
horses and wagon, and is making the best of the opportunities presented. 
His life since his return has been such that if emulated by the Indians 



78 



would result only in good. C is young yet, and we hope 

that he will improve in time. While there is nothing seriously against 
him, yet his conduct does not present a sufficient contrast to what it 
was, and is not what it should be. 

Melisse Inez the past year was assistant seamstress at this school, 
and has done very well. She could do better. She is such an improve- 
ment over what she would have been without the Hampton training, 
that itis well to be charitable with some of her foibles." 



From a Nebraska Newspaper. 

"This (the general store-room of the Genoa School) is in charge 
of Will Hunter, [a Hampton Indian student]. His is one of the most 
responsible positions in the school. Under his care is $5,000 worth of 
goods, and he manages his stock with the strictest business accu- 
racy, dealing out as needed for the supply of the whole school. The 
room is rather small, and closely packed. To us it was a bewildering 
mass of blankets, calicos, ginghams, hardware, etc. But crowded as 
it is you will find everything in perfect order. In the office down 
stairs we were shown specimens of Hunter's penmanship, and long 
columns of articles jotted down with scrupulous neatness." 



Record of Carlisle Students. 

Gen. R. M. Cutcheon, whose prompt and vigorous defense of the 
Eastern schools, in the House in '86, converted the attack started by 
the " Holman Committee," into an overwhelming majority in their fa- 
vor, read to the House, Hampton's record of its " Work for Two Races," 
and also a very interesting letter from Capt. Pratt, from which we are 
glad to give the following excellent report of Carlisle's students. 

Carlisle, Pa., March 17th, 1886. 
Hon. R. M. Cutcheon, House of Representatives. 

Letter just received. We have returned to 45 tribes, 438 pupils. 
I have received information that 34 are now employed as teachers, etc. 
in agency and other schools, that 42 are working for Government 
at agencies, that 27 are farming for themselves, that 56 are attend- 
ing agency and other schools as pupils, that 9 are employed as clerks 



79 



in stores, 41 are reported as doing nothing, 63 have died. Of the 
balance I have no certain information, but know that a good propor- 
tion are employed as scouts and policemen. Since school began, Oct., 
1879, we have had 1,041 students. Of these I have sent into families 
hereabouts for longer or shorter periods, 716, coming from all tribes, 
24 being Apaches, and a full proportion being Sioux, Kiowas, Coman- 
ches and Cheyennes, and others of the so-called "bad tribes." Only 
7 of this whole number have been charged with criminal conduct. 
This system qualifies for a change from tribal and reservation life to 
that of a citizen, and begets a desire for it. Scarcely a student but is 
able to take care of himself or herself among civilized people, at the 
end of their five years' course." 

R. H. Pratt, Capt., Supt. 



The Agents' Opinion of Eastern Education. 

In his report for '87, Mr. Riley, late Superintendent of Indian 
Schools, gives extracts from letters of various agents in reply to his 
inquiries as to Indian students returned from Eastern schools, and 
their impressions as to the value of Eastern education for Indians. 
We have given elsewhere (p. 46) their tabulated report of Hampton 
students. 

Agent McLaughlin of Standing Rock agency, one of the best and 
most successful Indian agents ever in the service, as all who know him 
and his work agree, thus gives his opinion on the general question. 
Similar ones are expressed by the others. We agree with them that 
the majority of Indian children will be educated in the West if at all, 
and as heartily of course in their estimate of the advantages of East- 
ern schools for all who can be sent. 

Agent McLaughlin says : 

" The large majority of the Indian children should be educated on 
the reservation, but I would recommend sending a few every year to 



80 



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0 021 780 191 6 



the Eastern training-schools, selecting the brighter pupils, who should 
be volunteers, as it affords an opportunity to see for themselves many 
t hings impossible to be seen on the reservation, such as the uniform 
home comforts of civilized life, the prosperity, by perseverance and 
economy, of the white race, together with the industry and happiness 
of all classes; and I would prepare such pupils to be teachers upon 
their return, while a few of those showing suitable talents mrght safely 
pursue the study of medicine." 



From Report on Hampton Institute, 

BY A 

Committee of the General Assembly of Virginia, 
November, 1887. 



" Your committee think it necessary in this connection to refer to 
the Indian students. They are sent by the United States government, 
which pays $167.00 a year for each Indian, and this money is used for 
the general support of the school. 

The introduction of Indians in the Institute does not in the least 
interfere in any way with the education of the colored students, but, on 
the other hand, there is a clear and unmistakable manifestation of a 
mutual benefit. Until recent years no opportunities were offered for 
the education of the Indians, but, through the indefatigable efforts of 
the principal of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, there 
is going on at the school a system, the object of which is to more tho- 
roughly improve and enlighten these two races, which have become a 
part and parcel of our great National Government. 

The aid which the United States government thus bestows upon 
the Institute is deeply appreciated, It goes towards advancing the 
usefulness of the institution, and is one step in the direction of national 
aid to free education in our land." 



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